Captain Chaos
by Darridus
Summary: The Dark Gods have a problem on their hands. Chaos is unknowable. Unpredictable. Is it truly chaos, then, if their every action is completely and wholeheartedly malevolent? They resolve the issue the only way possible, but helping mortals is against their nature. In accordance with chaos, though- they choose a champion that no one could have predicted. Billy Batson.
1. Chapter 1 : The Chosen One

**A/N: I realize that I've been writing a lot of new stories lately and not updating my older and more established ones, but I assure any readers of those stories that I fully intend to continue working on them. I've just had a lot of inspiration for new stories lately, and I confess that I'm suffering severe writers block for some of my longer stories. Anyways...I've tried to compensate for that by writing longer chapters. Speaking of which, please enjoy this one and feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions in the review section.**

* * *

Darkness did not truly engulf the warp. Not the whole of it, at least. There was darkness aplenty, to be certain, but to say that it completely obscured the vastness of the warp's entirety would be a grievous error in calculation. No, many things called the warp their home. Darkness, light, colors of corner of the spectrum.

That is the way of Chaos. It is _all things,_ not darkness alone. Indeed, to be any uniform thing would be antithetical to the very nature of Chaos, of change itself.

And this was why the Changer of Ways and firstborn of the Dark Gods was, even now, pondering upon his throne. He-if indeed it could be described as any single gender, which It could not. Change in all things allowed for no constants save change itself. But, for the purposes of mortal comprehension, the Dark God was often referred to as male-often did as such to formulate his infinite myriad of schemes and plots. Oh, the change he had wrought upon that terrible throne! Even at this very moment, ruin and wreckage rose up to replace the filthy stagnation built up by the civilized provinces of man, all in his own name at the hands of fanatical and treacherous servants alike. His rewards were both generous and sparse, as each served his own purpose, or even seemed to impede it. His machinations were unknowable, and even now a million more diabolical schemes hatched forth from his vile intellect as he put aside a certain measure of his attention to carry them out.

But he was, for the moment, distracted. If such a being could be called distracted, of course. Suffice to say, an unprecedented amount of his attention was occupied with a most frustrating and complex quandary. Indeed, he had been putting off the problem for uncounted millennia now, unable to come to a decisive solution.

The Dark Gods were normally not much ones for procrastination, and Tzeentch less than most. It was a testament to the complexity and impossibility of the current problem at hand that even Tzeentch had to take a moment-just a mere, insignificant moment- of such a large portion of his presence in order to provide himself with an adequate course of action with which to solve it.

The problem was unique. That was the only reason why he had to resort to such drastic measures. Change on such a scale was on par with his nature, of course, and the only constant that he allowed. It was only for that reason-that single, one, and only reason- that he chose the solution that he did. His considerable and impossibly vast, incomprehensible mind discovered a solution to his problem almost immediately.

Wasting no more time than this problem had undeservedly expended, Tzeentch arranged for a gathering. While it was true that this deep in the warp time had no meaning, every moment for a being of the Dark God's power and the minds of the Daemon-God's soul was an eternity. In a single instant they could arrange countless plots, wars, plagues, and wastrels on a billion worlds, were they not impeded by the infinitely-damned Emperor. A mortal, raising himself to the levels of _Gods_ and holding his own. To the Dark Gods, old as time itself, such an affront to their very existence was only described as the word they had been labeled with and spitefully embraced; _Heresy._

With a flick of his shifting and mutating appendage- it was too alien to be described as a wrist, though it might serve that purpose- he summoned the Others.

The closest to him in power was, appropriately, the first to arrive. In a burst of blood and visceral haze, Khorne made his presence known. A fountain of red ichor spewed from below as bits of ruined flesh and bone rained down after cascading from a font beneath the War God's behooved feet. The crimson skin of Khorne's satyrical form oozed blood like a mortal might have perspired salt and water, and war's bloody incarnation breathed hellfire and brimstone ash as a mortal would expel air, carbon, and dioxide. Twin blades forged from the agonizing souls of a billion fallen Daemons were held in Khorne's impossibly muscled arms, and blood coated them like a film. Eyes of hellish red and teeth so coated in blood god's preferred drink since millennia before the Old Ones invented numbers that the blood had simply fused to bone long ago.

"**WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!" **Khorne screamed at the top of his metaphorically gargantuan lungs. **"THERE IS BLOOD YET TO SPILL AND DEATH TO BRING. HATRED STILL BECKONS AND MY THRONE HAS ROOM FOR MORE SKULLS, YET! SPEAK, BROTHER, OR I SHALL CARVE MYSELF A BLOODY SWATHE FROM TEN THOUSAND THOUSAND THOUSAND OF YOUR CRETINOUS SLAVES BY LIGHT'S END!" **The Blood God, for all else that could be said of the second brother of the Dark Gods, did not mince words. Tzeentch remained silent as the other two of their number arrived. He had always known that nothing would ever placate Khorne's limitless wrath, ever since the first moment of his existence.

Nurgle came next. His writhing and bloated avatar of rotting flesh and broken teeth gradually dug itself from the ground, a walking corpse with an unmistakable glow of malevolent thought behind those pox and vermin infested eye sockets.

"**Ah, Brother… It's been so long since last you called upon me…Perhaps…perhaps thirty years now? No, it was forty. We should gather like this more often…My children weep for the absence of all of their uncles…"**

Nurgle drawled out. His words were coughed or drained out from his gaping maw of rotten teeth and black gums, whereas Khorne's had boomed like thunder and death. They seeped out of the Grandfather like drawn blood, leeched out by hungry vermin of the swamps and lonely darkness.

And finally came the youngest of the Dark Gods. The misfit, the outcast, and runt. Hated by Khorne above either of the others, condescended by Nurgle-although who wasn't?-and disregarded by Tzeentch. Slaanesh slithered through a vortex of musky and colorful smoky ash, and floated in the air far above the obsidian howling halls of Tzeentch's domain.

"**Dear, Dear…" **He wryly and exaggeratedly condescended, feigning severe dismay. Tzeentch did not regard his physical avatar, as to look upon something so contrived would hardly be a prudent use of his time. For now, he was some ludicrous cross of mortal man and woman as was in the Thirster's nature, clad in only ornaments and exaggeratedly colorful flesh. Slaanesh changed his own form more often than Tzeentch himself, which often grated on the Changer of Ways as a minor annoyance-assuming, of course, that the Bird God felt such mortal emotions. **"I cannot bear the sight of this place! So drab, so boring! How wretched. I retain that we should hold our meeting in my own realm, or at least somewhere less… horrid, than this. You are tasteless, Brother. I simply must confess." **Slaanesh spake, and was ignored.

Business was at hand, and there was no need to waste valuable, precious moments on such childish antics. Tzeentch spoke aloud for the first time in many years, and as a direct result fifty newborn babes across the Galaxy mutated in their cribs into horrible, vile monsters who devoured their terror-stricken parents whole or in pieces. Insanity took a billion souls more in that single moment his breath drew to make speech, and the click of his tongue birthed ten new warp storms.

"**BRoTheRS, wE hAvE gAthEreD heRe toDAy FoR a siNgle pURpOSe. A PRObLEm of…UNiqUE cOmPOsITiOn hAs MaDe itSElF knOwn tO Me ManY, mAny years ago. i noW bRIng uS tOGEtheR BECaUse It PrEsenTS A CLeAr eRRor iN oUr NaTuRe…" **His flanging and million-voiced words intoned from every direction, bellowing and whispering through every hall of his plane in the warp. **"ThInK oN It BRoThERs… FoR EvERy mORTal tHat We sLaY, fOr** **eveRy lIFe wE DesTRoY, a MIllIOn mOrE sHaLL SpRIng FRoM tHe wOrLdS Of EvEry rAcE, liKE WeEdS. BuT mOrE thAN THaT, iT hAs bECOmE…ExPeCTeD…PreDiCTAble."**

Khorne scoffed and absently spat at one of the daemons that drank of the blood pooling at his feet, incinerating it's very soul with contemptuous ease. **"PREDICTABLE?! EXPECTED?! NONSENSE! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK OF OUR WAY IN SUCH A MANNER! I OUGHT SHOULD FLAY YOUR MOST PRECIOUS, SNIVELING SLAVE-WORM ALIVE AND BOIL HIM IN HIS OWN! MELTING! SOUL! WE HAVE KILLED AND MURDERED AND TORTURED AND RAPED THIS GALAXY FOR AN **_**ETERNITY! **_**YOU AS MUCH AS THE REST OF US, YET NOW…NOW I KNOW NOT OF WHAT YOU SPEAK, BUT I KNOW YOU SPEAK NOT OF **_**WAR!**_

Nurgle and Slaanesh politely rolled their eyes at their elder brother's antics. He was their elder, certainly, and more powerful than both on a good day, but he was…set, in his ways. More so than the rest of them. They adapted and changed with the flow of time, something that even ones such as they had to accept had great sway over the universe. Khorne bowed to no one, even when it served his interest to do so. It was simply his nature.

Continuing as if he had not been interrupted, Tzeentch spoke again. **"mEEtiNg ExPeCtaTIon… fOllOwiNG TRaDitIOn…tHAt iS **_**NoT**_** tHe WAy oF CHAOs." **He admonished his brothers. Their cooperation was necessary for his latest scheme, and if it was not secured failure was almost a certainty. And like tradition and predictability, failure was not the way of Chaos. **"WHiCh bRInGs mE TO tHe pOiNt oF tHIS gAThErInG…"**

He checked to ensure that he had the undivided attention of his brothers. Khorne sat grudgingly, scowling with a fist beneath his chin and breathing out ash in a huff, waiting for his elder brother to get on with it so he could get back to murder and torture. Nurgle, for his part, sat their patiently, probably reserving the back of his head for the various concoctions he needed to stay ahead of science and medicine, a never-ending race. This, Tzeentch allowed, as in this particular matter it was not his place to question his 2nd Brother. Mortals, after all, only ever retained a finite level of cunning and guile. He had no experience in dealing with a threat that changed by the hands of mortals rather than Chaos itself, and thus held his tongue.

Slaanesh put on the countenance of boredom and disinterest, but Tzeentch saw through the ruse. It was feigned, as Slaanesh was in truth quite intrigued. It was not often that his elder brothers chose to include him in their affairs.

"**wE hAVe ALwAyS sOUght tHe rUIN AnD dESTrUcTIoN oF MOrTAlS, mY bROtHERs. oF tHIs, YOu aRe uNERriNg. ANd tHAt…iS prECisELy THe pROBleM."** He held up a hand to forestall the angry cries of Khorne, and the metaphorical raised eyebrows of his other brothers. They had no true need to convey their minds as such…but it was a choice. A stylization so that they were not too alien for even the warp to comprehend. **"FoR iS NOt tHe wAY Of CHaOs EtERnAl CHaNGe? oF uN-coNStAncY? AnD YeT… wE hAVe **_**AlWaYs**_** SoUgHT dEStrUCtiOn, dEAth, AnD rUInAtiON. THAt iS whY WE aRe sO-CAlLEd tHe RUInOUS poWerS bY tHE tONgUeS OF mAn, iS iT NOt? THIs…mUst bE rECtiFieD, iMMeDiATelY.**

Khorne, for his part, had an expression never before seen upon his face. Stupefied awe. He composed himself in a mere moment, and took in his hands a greater daemon to crush like an overripe fruit. Blood exploded into the air and melted upon contact with his boiling skin. **"YOU…! YOU…YOU SPEAK OF **_**MADNESS!"**_

Tzeentch chuckled malevolently at that. Amusement filled the crevices of his mind and his power thrummed in rhythm to it. Irony was of course a staple of Daemonic agreements… **"AlWAyS, bROTheR…FOr mADneSS iS ThE oNly ConSISteNcY wE aRe ALloWEd." **A plan had begun to take shape between them. In the mortal plane of the Imperium, Chaos was uniformly and unerringly a force of destruction and evil…And uniformity is against the tenets of Chaos. They would not budge in that regards. But how…And then it hit them. Uniformity was forbidden, but duplicity was not. And though it was oft the focus of their intentions, the Imperium of Man was far, far from the only world over which they could have sway…

* * *

Another world came into view at this point. Not in the warp, and not in the Imperium. It was…elsewhere. Time and space was nothing to the power of the Dark Gods, and the warp led to far stranger places than this, if only just.

For it was no longer the forty-first year since the rebirth of a long forgotten prophet. The old god was still glorified in temples of splendor, peace, and a little faith. No Astartes screamed praises or curses at the feet of a dead god in this time. The Tau still played with sticks and stones a billion miles away, the Eldar still reeled from the blow dealt to them by Slaanesh as their spirits and gods alike slaked her thirst. The orks were still far away yet, the green tide yet to reach the shores of man. The Tyranid was still out there, lurking in the shadows of a faraway world. "Xenos" of every breed had yet to discover man, still a babe in it's cradle upon Earth. Ancient Terra.

The Dark Age of Technology had not yet come to pass, Mars was still a lifeless and empty world. The Himilaya Mountains were home not to the Gene-Labs of Mortal God, but rather a league of shadows and the false demon who was their head.

This world was yet untouched by the ruinous powers, and the Emperor…the Emperor was conspicuously absent. The Warp was…clean, here…It sickened Nurgle and Tzeentch both. Khorne still gawked at a relatively closeby world where an evil god reigned supreme with violence, murder, and blood. He would have descended on that world at any other time, granting them the honor of learning the true meaning of the Blood God, but time was short for the Ruinous Powers.

They each projected their spirits, invisible to the eyes of mortals, across space and time to the skies above Ancient Terra. There they descended further, down to the stone and steel jungle in search of their quarry.

"**I SEE NOT THE ONE OF WHOM YOU SPAKE." **Grumbled Khorne, obstinately. Of all of the Dark Gods, Khorne had taken the most convincing of the necessity of this gambit. In the end, though, he had acquiesced. It may not have been in the blood god's nature, but the very existence of Chaos in it's current form brooked no other recourse.

"**THEn yoU aRE not lOOkIng hARd EnOUgH. i sEE HiM oVeR ThERe, nEAr tHe cREVicE BetWEEn tHe tOWeRs…" **And indeed, there he was.

A boy, ten years of age. Clad in a ratty pair of denim trousers and a blindingly red cotton shirt. It contrasted heavily with the muted grays and cold stone of the city, even if it was covered in filth. The boy in question was named Billy Batson, and he was wandering through the streets of Fawcett City. He had just finished scrounging through a dumpster in an alleyway, with a half-eaten bag of peanuts and about a third of a bottle of vitamin water to show for his troubles. This was a rather good haul for him, as the bottle had been closed by a cap and the flies stayed away from the hard shells of the peanuts.

Still, Billy was not a happy child. Far from it, as he rapidly approached the end of his first year out on the streets as a homeless orphan.

It was not always this way for him. He used to be Billy Batson, only son of the well-to-do Batson family. He'd had everything he wanted in the world at the start. His father worked hard so that they could live comfortably, and he was a very successful businessman. His mother likewise devoted much of her time and effort into raising Billy to be an upstanding and happy child. They had lived in a nice house in the suburbs and went on vacation every summer to the Bahamas. It was a good, comfortable life. Perfect, in retrospect.

All of that _changed_, though, the day of the accident. Billy's parents had been out late one night, on their anniversary. They had a private dinner at a nice restaurant and had left Billy with a babysitter for the evening.

Tragedy struck on the way home. Not everyone had been as sensible with their imbibing of alcoholic beverages as the Batsons had been that night. Cletus Whitaker, a construction worker, had indulged in no less than four bottles of Heineken's Beer that night after a long day at work. This proved to be a fatal error in judgment as his swerving truck smashed headlong into the Batson's Stanza.

In the morning, the babysitter annoyedly answered the front door after being forced to keep watch over Billy for the night after her calls to the Batsons went unanswered. Her frustrated scowl turned to wide-eyed horror when she was greeted with two uniformed constables informing her of the Batson's fate. She had known the family for many years now, as her father had worked with Mr. Batson at the office since before she was born.

Billy took the tragic news with all of the expected tears and grief. He had loved his mother and father well, and their deaths had come so suddenly. Unfortunately for the poor child, this was only the prelude to another chapter of misery in his short life.

He was left to live with his rotten uncle shortly afterwards, you see. But Uncle Dudley had no interest in raising young Billy, as he had been ostracized by his brother for years due to his conniving ways. As soon as the checks cleared for Billy's considerable inheritance into Dudley's own accounts thanks to a friend of his at City Hall, Billy was summarily and unceremoniously kicked to the curb without a penny to his name.

And here he was, almost a year later. Scavenging for scraps in a dumpster like some kind of disease-ridden rodent. He had no idea what else to do. He had no other family, no way to contact any of his parents friends…He had no idea whether they would even help him or not if he _could_ reach them… His uncle's treatment had done little to cultivate his trust in adults.

"**So this is the child we seek?" **Asked Slaanesh. **"Hmmph. Even before his fall from grace, he had little inclination towards debauchery. All of that wealth, and never any inkling of what sensations it could buy him! And he has not yet reached adulthood, either. I am unsure as to what you believe we can use him for, Elder Brother."**

Tzeentch overruled the runt's complaints. **"YoUR PaRt iN tHIs nOt tO SEcOND-gUESs mY sChMEe, BROtheR. YOu nEEd ONlY LUre HiM aWaY frOM thAt mIScREAnt oVEr ThErE-" **Tzeentch gestured a writhing and betentacled arm towards the glamoured form of a man ordinarily dressed in a trench-coat. Beneath the illusions was a sorcerer of some sort, garbed in white and with a flowing beard that long ago lost all of it's color. He was a practitioner of the mystic arts, but not one who paid any homage or allegiance to the Dark Gods. **"-AnD iNTo tHe dEPthS BELoW, whERe wE shALL prEParE tHe rITuAL…"**

So Slaanesh was left alone up there as his brothers floated down a nearby subway tunnel. The sign in front pronounced it to be 'out of order'. The mortals had no idea just how accurate that description was about to become.

He took upon himself the form of a child, himself. Billy Batson was unlike to trust outright any adult who approached him, and was more like to flee in fearing some kind of abuse. It was a harsh world out there, he had learned firsthand. So instead, Slaanesh chose to appear as an innocent, adorable little orphan girl. She wore second-hand clothing too baggy to fit properly-remarkably chaste in comparison to Slaanesh's usual attire, but sensuality would get him little attention from so young a child- and wore her long blonde hair in a single braid. She approached Billy just as he approached the alleyway where the sorcerer awaited.

"Hey…" She called out to him. He looked up from his feet in surprise, blue eyes seeing only the slightly younger child before him and not the Dark God beneath. But the sorcerer was not fooled, and Slaanesh stuck out his elongated tongue to taunt him. It was too bad there was no time to corrupt the conservative old man.

Sensing the power of the Daemon-God before him, the sorcerer retreated in defeat into the darkness of the alleyway, where he vanished without a sight or sound into whatever wretched plane he made his home.

"Uh, hello?" Greeted Billy in return, perplexed. Usually other children only approached him if they wanted something, and he had already drank all of the vitamin water bottle he'd found in the dumpster. He subtly shifted the almost-empty bag of peanuts in his hands to guard against snatching. "What do you want…?" He asked carefully.

Slaanesh smiled, plastering a foolish and child-like grin across the face of the girl. "Me 'an some of th' others 'ave gotten together some food for a stew down in the tunnels! I saw you out 'ere an' you looked 'ungry, so I thought you might fancy joinin' us!" Slaanesh tempted the boy with his current most tangible desire-hunger. He spoke in his best approximation of Orkish to keep the boy from expecting any kind of deceit. That particular dialect…lacked, in that regard.

"Really?" He asked, bright-eyed excitement. Slaanesh grinned.

"Yeah! We won't be able to finish it all ourselves, so I'm invitin' all the kids around 'ere to come get some grub!" And with that, Slaanesh ran off into the crowd leaving a flustered Billy, whose eyes locked on the nearby subway tunnel even as his stomach growled in demand for his legs to carry it there. They obliged.

* * *

"Hello?" His immature voice echoed out through the tunnel. "Helloooo…Is anyone down here?" He searched, with growing anxiety. He sincerely hoped he had not been the butt of a cruel prank.

"**The child has arrived."** Nurgle remarked. **"It appears Slaanesh was successful in his endeavor…"**

Tzeentch took note of that silently as he approached Billy, in a form that would not cause _immediate_ alarm. Perhaps the runt was good for something after all.

"Hello Billy. We've been expecting you." The boy turned around in a whiplash, and terror dawned on his face when he saw the form of the Dark God behind him.

Standing tall and gaunt, and in billowing robes of midnight blue, the Changer of Ways reached near the top of the alleyway in height. A twisted cross of man and raven, covered in black feathers with an obsidian beak and blazing crimson eyes. From the sides, Khorne and Nurgle made their presences known as well. "AHHHHHH!" Billy screamed, in horror and awe. To be expected.

Khorne took the form of one of his Greater Daemons, with twisting horns and bulging, blood-colored muscle. He wielded two blades dripping and oozing the life-blood of alien and human alike, and his eyes of gold were slitted with rage even as his maw of razor teeth clinched in murderous anger.

Nurgle's sickening, lipless grin that revealed broken and rotting teeth did little to calm down the terrified child. A sack of bloated and rotting flesh held together by yellowing, leathery skin stretched apart in some places to reveal the organs beneath made a suitably grotesque sight. Empty eye sockets filled to the brim with maggots stared emptily into Billy's soul.

Slaanesh joined them as well, coming the entrance and down to the tunnel. He had maintained the visage of the human child he had glamoured himself to appear as, but she now smirked malevolently rather than grinned goofily. "I'm afraid there isn't really a stew cooking down here, Billy…" He said in his true voices, sending shivers down the spine of the mortal before him as Billy collapsed to his knees and tears streamed down his face.

"Now Billy, pay my brothers no mind. We are not going to hurt you…I promise." Said the Changer of Ways, placing a comforting set of arm-talons on Billy's shoulder carefully. "I'm sorry if we scared you, but there was no other way to bring you here without garnering…unwanted attention. Now, getting straight to business…" He leaned down to Billy, getting right in his face. He must have cut a terrifying sight, but even so, Billy was listening. The tears had stopped, and his eyes now narrowed rather than widened. He was suspicious…and that showed promise.

"I want to make you a serious offer, Billy." That was, of course, a lie. The term 'offer' implied that the recipient had a choice as to whether they were going to take it or leave it. That was not the case, here. Still, the word seemed to comfort the boy a tiny modicum, so Tzeentch continued down the road of a voluntary agreement. He calculated that this way would produce the most favorable results. His brothers, as instructed, kept their peace.

"We have been searching, now, for quite some time." Another lie. "For eons, we have searched in vain for an honest, good, and pure soul to impart our power…" he revealed in kindly, charitable tones that did not befit his appearance. As with all lies, though, Tzeentch wore the mask like a second face. His soothing voice calmed the child, lulling him into a sense of security and safety that was entirely uncalled for given his present company. "You, Billy Batson of Terra, have been chosen. You were the only one deemed pure enough and worthy enough to receive our power…" And that was true enough.

The entire point of this was to change their modus operandi sufficiently enough in a way that was completely unpredictable. Chaotic. It was simply a part of their nature that each of them had to accept.

With this, none could say that the Ruinous Powers' influence on the universe was _completely_ and uniformly negative. Young Billy Batson had been chosen simply because he was a pure, innocent soul who was completely and utterly powerless. To give him of their own power, freely, was nothing short of charitable. An action that no one-not even the Corpse Emperor- could have truly predicted.

But they needed to do this correctly. Coming to Batson with bad faith or ulterior motives would render the whole thing pointless, which was why this dimension in particular had been chosen. Here, where the Dark Gods had no previous foothold to speak of. It was clean of their influence so far, and thus creating a Champion of the boy would not threaten any of their plans for the Imperium of Man.

"M-me…? But, But I'm just some kid from Fawcett City…What am I supposed to do with your power?" Oh, the amusement. A little, powerless boy, with no strength or authority of his own, downtrodden and oppressed by those around him and ignored by the powers that (Save themselves, of course), is asking them what to do with unlimited power. Tzeentch grinned, effortlessly keeping his mutated face the picture of grandfatherly kindliness and condescension. Nurgle was most likely better suited for that, if not for his completely grotesque appearance.

"That, my boy, is for you to discover." He extended one arm, a touched Billy over the heart. Summoning his arcane and supernatural power, Tzeentch traced his mark, a twisting and curving crescent broken by a perfect sphere, and the brand completed itself over the boy's very soul. "I give you cunning, guile, and wisdom beyond the scope of mortal possibility. You shall perceive the universe on a fundamentally new level, far and away a better understanding than the wisest sage or eldest being. Fires and Lightnings and Hailings shall answer to your call. You shall understand magics and spells to the highest possible order, and no black art shall be beyond your reach…"

Billy Batson could only look on in awe as the four Dark Gods branded him with their own mark. He found himself short of breath and paralyzed with a mixture of awe and terror that threatened to overtake his consciousness. The Devouring Earth traced traced three arrows traveling away from a central focus away from each other, and three circles in the spaces between. "You shall be untouched by disease or decay, immortal among all of creation. Time itself may no longer stand against you. Plague, parasite, and pestilence alike shall stand by you in battle or in rule. The Earth shall claim your foes, and death shall be your comrade."

The Blood God traced his own mark upon the heart of Billy Batson. Long, crimson claws that dripped the life-blood of a thousand slaughtered foes. A triangle, a line, and a wide-arched "V". Khorne's countenance was as terrifying and brutal as ever, sharp features twisted in an unholy and unquenchable rage. "You shall be war itself. Fiery death shall take your victims. No flame may touch you, for the fire inside your very soul burns with the fury of the deepest pits of hell. Hatred… Rage… Bloodlust… You shall be the master of this much and more. Your arms and legs and muscly organs shall be forged like bloodsteel in the hellfires of my domain. You shall have weapons, and armor, forged from my strongest Daemons and forever enslaved to your will…"

Finally, She Who Thirsts came upon the boy and traced her own child-like palm across the taller boy's heart. Slaanesh still retained his glamoured form so as not to drive the boy mad and ruin their carefully laid plan. Twin crescents facing opposite directions and intersected by a bar leading to a circle. "You shall be the picture of mortal beauty and perfection. Illusions and Glamours will be yours to command, and the hearts of mortals shall find themselves enthralled in your presence. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, all of the myriad senses shall be yours alone to master."

With finality, a harsh and bright light of every color imaginable overtook Billy's vision, even as his chest felt ready to burst. A great weight seemed to lift itself from him, as he heard the parting words of the Darkest of the Dark Gods.

"**NOw wE sHAll hAvE yOUr aNsWEr, BILly BAtsOn…WHAt wIll YoU dO nOw?"**

the voice chilled his very soul, and hurt his ears. His mortal mind struggled to comprehend the sounds that they made, to string together the syllables into any kind of coherent thought. His vision, hearing, and feelings all faded away to nothing as the world went black and he faded into unconsciousness.

* * *

He woke up sometime later. The simultaneous musky, rotten, and coppery scent had all vanished. There was no sign of Tzeentch, Khorne, Nurgle, or Slaanesh. How did Billy even know all of those names…?

He opened his eyes to see only the dark and empty abandoned subway tunnel that he had wandered down in to. He began to wonder if it had all been just a weird dream…but it had seemed so real! He remembered every morbid detail of the horrific and monstrous forms of the strange beings that had given him their mark.

That was right. There was no way it was all a dream…

Unsteadily, he tried to bring himself up off the ground. That was when he noticed the changes wrought by the Dark Gods on himself.

Standing where Billy Batson had once stood, there was now something completely unrecognizable to anyone who had known the boy before his transformation. He stood tall-taller than anyone he had ever seen. His head nearly reached the high ceiling of the tunnel, and his eyes felt like they would bug out in terror at first when he got up. He saw the ground beneath him, what must have been twelve feet down!

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. His entire body was encased in bulky, encumbering armor that left not a single patch of exposed flesh. He analyzed his limbs and felt like the armor felt far too light for it's size, and it was painted black and gold. It was decorated in spikes, runes, and engravings of arrows all over the place. When he looked down to the center of his chest, he saw a huge jewel circled by a golden set. It looked like…an eye. It was a blazing, ruby red eye with a slit for a pupil. If he looked closely, he could see blood vessels within the jewel, darkened blood within the veins. Similar gems could be seen at the 'buckle' spot on his belt, as well as at the end of the tassel that obscured his codpiece.

He lifted his hands up to get a better look at them. They were enormous, monstrous things. They looked like they could hold a basketball in each palm, and they felt so strong! Billy clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times experimentally. His armored fingers were surprisingly dexterous for their bulk, and the weight of the gauntlets didn't slow them down at all.

Looking to either side of his head, he could see huge, armored shoulders. The pauldrons were almost bigger than his head! The rims were encased in gold with spikes and engravings of hideous creatures of every sort, and the helmet that encased his head seriously limited the movement of his neck. He couldn't tell what it looked like, obviously, but he was once again shocked by the lack of weight the helm caused his head.

If he was honest with himself, he was perfectly comfortable in the bulky armor. The only thing that really bugged him was the fact that he was actually wearing such scary looking armor and didn't remember putting it on, to say nothing of suddenly being _twelve feet tall!_

He started to panic. What was he going to do? He couldn't go out looking like this! What would all of the people say? They'd think he was some kind of lunatic! He could just imagine the police and the SWAT Teams showing up with flashing red and blue lights and shrieking sirens, coming to haul him off to jail. Or maybe men in white coats would come to institutionalize him in the funny farm or something.

But…he couldn't just stay _here_, could he? He looked around himself, getting a feel for his surroundings.

There was no sign of those freaky demons that had came up out of nowhere earlier. His memory of meeting them was…fuzzy. He remembered their basic appearances and the gist of what the bird-like one said, but couldn't really put any details to it or remember all of the senses or anything from the experience. It was like his brain had locked up the memories so they couldn't hurt him or something. He'd heard of repressed memories before…but that kind of thing didn't happen to normal people like him, right?

"Holy Moly…" He muttered to himself, and then stopped. Was that _his_ voice? It sounded like Darth Vader or something, but a lot louder and echoing inside the bulky helmet over his head. It sounded nothing like the voice of the ten-year-old kid he'd been this morning.

Searching frantically, he spotted a pile of broken glass underneath a torn up advertisement on the wall. His footsteps thundered over there and he wobbled a little as he adjusted to the newfound weight and length of his legs. It should've been harder, but…It was like second nature to him. By the time he'd traversed the distance to the broken glass pile over by the wall, his footsteps became confident and steady. "Whoah…" he breathed.

He knelt down by the glass, determined to see what else had been changed. He saw, for the first time, the helm that encased his head.

It was a vicious, angular, ghastly thing. The glowing eyes were two triangles that seemed to bleed out murderous intent; the skull emblazoned atop the forehead looked _real. _A rebreather and twin exhaust ports on the side of the helmet gave it an almost industrial appearance, though, contrasting with the medieval brutality and arcane countenance of the armor plating itself. As he looked closer, he could make out tubes and wires and servos and studs, all made out of the same sturdy looking metal components.

Two enormous tusks protruded from the sides of the helmet, like some kind of wild elephant. But unlike the sleek and smooth ivory of the African beast, these tusks had an almost ram-like look to them, with many tiny segments serrating the horns.

A long, midnight-black cape billowed behind him as it hung from the back of his shoulder pauldrons. It was just the right length that it didn't appear stunted but it wasn't so big that he would ever trip over it.

All together, the armor and helm made him look…well…evil. He looked like some kind of crazy demon monster thingy! The weird blend of advanced machinery and archaic armor only served to make his appearance more unsettling.

But this was all avoiding another critical question. What did he look like _underneath_ the armor?

With all the rest that changed-his height, his strength, his basic physique, he wondered what else might have been transformed. Was he still the same Billy Batson under the intimidating helmet?

…There was only one way to find out.

Taking a deep breath that echoed on the inside of his tusked helmet, he raised his hands to grasp the sides and lifted it up. At first, nothing happened, as his apprehensive grip was too soft to separate the helm from the rest of the armor. He experimentally applied more strength, and as if sensing his intentions, he heard the hiss of decompressing air as the red light disappeared from behind the eyes of his helmet and what looked like mist suddenly fwooshed out of the exhaust ports on the sides and very top of his helmet. He heard a loud clunking noise as something seemed to finally release the helmet from the neck and he now lifted it with ease, as if it was as light as a feather.

He was not greeted with the visage of a monster, terrifying visage pieced together by broken glass. No, nothing of the sort. He took a large piece in his hand to get a closer look, but it broke in his powerful fingers. He frowned, and leaned his considerable bulk closer in to the next large piece he could find. He had to shift his huge mass-a process that took less time than he had anticipated going by his size- in order to keep from blocking out the light that shone from the street above. The only thing that separated the tunnels from the busy streets of Fawcett City was a broken chain-link fence that Billy had slipped through easily enough with the frame of a ten year old. Then again, with this new body, he would probably have a lot more trouble pulling off that particular maneuver.

As he angled the glass to his face with anxious haste, he found himself gasping in astonishment. "W-what the heck did they do to me…?" He asked himself in the now unfiltered voice. It had done little to alter the menacing tones or intimidating deep pitch, but at least now he could put a voice to the face that stared at him from the other side of the glass shards resting on the dirty subway ground.

It was, for lack of a better term, beautiful. The face had perfectly symmetrical sharp features, unblemished skin, and piercing blood-red eyes. But it was…unnerving. It wasn't beautiful in the way a girl might be pretty, or even handsome. It had some kind of…supernatural allure to it. Billy shuddered as he took in the features that had been newly shaped upon his once normal face.

The flawless skin was pale white, almost corpselike in its complexion. Long, thick and silky smooth hair had cascaded down after he had removed his helmet. It reached his shoulders, and Billy had to sweep it back with a gauntleted hand to keep it out of his eyes.

One thing was certain; his new face looked _nothing_ like his old one. "I-I…I'm…Am I still me?" He voiced his concerns to the empty tunnel, and damning silence was his only response.

* * *

Billy forced himself to wait until nightfall to take his leave of the haunted tunnel. There was no way he was going to go out in the middle of a busy street looking like he walked out of some kind of horror movie. He had spent the hours in between when he woke up and the setting of the sun examining his armor more closely.

It was even fiercer upon closer inspection than he had previously taken note of. For one thing, disturbingly realistic skulls were shaped from gold and decorated his armor _everywhere. _Sharp spikes lined the rims of his shoulder guards and the ends of his joints.

The armor itself was incredibly stocky, and its arms were almost as long as its legs! He would've called it almost…dwarf-like, if it hadn't been about twelve feet tall! Those dimensions still boggled him. He had no idea why those scary ghost-things had given him this…form, but he recalled the bird one telling him something about being chosen. Billy, for the life of him, couldn't begin to guess _why_ he had been selected for whatever reason they gave him this armor and this new body. He grimaced in frustration. The least the ghosts could've done was to explain the situation to him! He was just a kid.

Of course, he reflected, he would have a hard time convincing anyone else of that now. He had no idea what he was supposed to do when he went out there, besides not getting caught looking like this. If anyone saw him skulking around in this scary armor, they'd probably call the cops on him!

And that brought him to another thing. The armor-no matter how hard he tugged, pulled, peeled, or smashed around- simply _would not come off. _As far as Billy could tell…it was irremovable. And that was certainly inconvenient for his present situation, as he couldn't go out like this without making a scene and it would be quite some time before Halloween came along. Thus, he was left with no choice but to wait until dark and do his best to…

…well, honestly, he still hadn't figured that part out yet. He was just focusing on sneaking out of the tunnel while no one was looking.

He did just that a few minutes later, after he mustered up the courage. He couldn't stay in there forever, after all.

Oddly enough, though, he didn't feel the least bit hungry even though the only thing he'd had to eat all day were those peanuts this morning. He wasn't hungry or thirsty, even though it was already night time. Well, maybe those ghost people had made him magically not hungry anymore? He supposed that he had no cause to complain then- he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a decent meal.

The streets were dark and empty when he arose from the tunnel. Only the miniscule illumination available from the streetlights and windows of all of the downtown Fawcett City skyscrapers allowed him to see ahead of him, though he never remembered being able to see _this_ clearly at night before. It was almost like his eyes could actually see better than they did this morning, as he read a sign advertising some new smartphone over four blocks away.

The stars themselves were almost invisible thanks to the industrial smog and light pollution that permeated the air this far into the city.

Billy began to wander aimlessly down the sidewalk. He needed a plan.

There was no way he could talk his way out of suddenly being a big huge monster armor guy without making a fuss. They'd probably say he was crazy if he told anyone that a bunch of ghost-monsters and some little girl had turned him into…into this thing!

His powerful, tree-trunk thick legs stomped down the otherwise silent streets with reverberating clunks. He must've weighed a ton, if the cracks that formed in the sidewalk whenever he took a step were any indication.

Billy, being an orphan and homeless for nearly a year, knew his way around the streets of Fawcett City quite well. His vision, hearing, and even sense of smell seemed enhanced now, though, so the landscape was like an open book to him. He could tell what alleyways had dumpsters in them just by smelling them, and he was painfully aware of all of the storm drains leading to the sewers. He could see for blocks in every direction with pinpoint precision and clarity he wouldn't have though possible without binoculars. He could hear a couple of cats fighting in another alley about three blocks down and-

"Ahh! Help!" A woman screamed, softly even to his ears. She must've been a ways away.

"Shut up, girlie. Wouldn't want nothin' to happen to you, now would we…" A slimy voice admonished the woman, and Billy heard the distinctive _shink_ of a switchblade being flipped open.

"Yeah!" another voice said, different from the other male. "Relax, babe…we just want to have a little fun, is all." Feigned and sarcastic gentleness was put into this voice, leaving little question as to it's true intentions.

Without thinking, Billy rushed in the direction of the voices. He ran as quickly as his legs could carry him, barreling over anything in his way. His footsteps smashed the concrete sidewalk beneath him with every step he took. Parked cars were batted aside with almost contemptuous ease by his gargantuan form.

Living out on the streets as he did, Billy had overheard or even seen first-hand muggings and the like. But he had been powerless then. Tiny. Weak. Now…maybe this is what those ghosts meant. Maybe they gave him this new body for a reason. He was big now. Strong. Strong enough to help people, and save them from bullies thugs like these.

When he reached the source of the voices, over five blocks away from his position outside the subway tunnel, he rounded the corner with a feverish haste of a hero with a mission. No way was anyone going to get hurt when Billy Batson could finally do something about it!

The thugs looked like typical inner-city gangbangers. They wore ratty jeans and t-shirts or a basketball jerseys. Billy gulped in sudden trepidation, now that he saw that there were more than just two of them surrounding a woman who was laying on the ground. Some of her clothing was torn and her face sported a nasty-looking mark, Billy noted in growing indignation. Didn't these guys know you weren't supposed to hit girls?

Still, there were apparently seven of them. In his haste to get to the alley, he hadn't been paying attention to hear anymore voices that might reveal the gang's numbers. Billy was worried, now. He may have been big but…they had weapons! They carried chains, pipes, tire irons, wrenches…and the leader…he…he had a _gun!_

"W-what the hell is that, yo?!" One of the thugs asked his fellows.

"No fuckin' idea, dawg…"

"What is this shit…"

Billy was transfixed. The thugs stood between him and the woman lying in the back of the alley, who he could hear sobbing quietly. But the leader of the gang…the guy with the most gold bling and all the other gangsters seemed to be drawing closer too ever since Billy showed up was now pointing a pistol at Billy in a two-hand grip. "Step off, freakshow. I'm packin' heat, here! You here me? Just back _the fuck_ off…" He said. "I'm warnin' you, whatever the fuck you are…I got a gun, you see!"

"Yeah, take 'em Dwayne!" Said one of the voices Billy heard earlier.

"Show this carival fucker who's boss…" Said another.

Not knowing what else to do, and too scared to think, Billy was on autopilot. Without thinking, he took a step towards the gangsters. It wasn't any conscious move on his part…but something…_primal_, within him, was telling him to go forward. To not run away. To confront these guys. To _fight._

'That's it! Die, motherfucker!" The gang leader shot Billy.

Billy's eyes shut tight in panic as he heard the deafening gunshot. For some reason, despite his enhanced hearing, the shot didn't even hurt his ears a little despite how close it was.

Huh…? He opened his eyes. Did the gangster miss?

The looks on the faces of the gangbangers said otherwise. Silence reigned in the dark alleyway as the echo of the gunshot dissipated and a look of awe was plastered across the faces of the thugs. Some began backing away.

But the leader stood his ground. Not wanting to lose face in front of his minions, he started shooting again, rapidly. Billy was scared, but kept his eyes open this time.

Each and every shot hit their mark. A bullet hit him in the chest. Another hit him on the forehead of his tusked helm. They hit his legs, arms, waist, and even the neck until the pistol clicked empty. Horror dawned on the gangsters' faces.

Billy…Billy hadn't felt a thing! Every single bullet hit him, but he didn't even feel anything at all! He was bulletproof!

With a triumphant grin, Billy strode forth with newfound confidence. Time to teach these punks some manners!

"My turn." He said, and his deep and ominous voice drove a new spike of terror into the resolve of the gangsters. One of them tried to flee past him, but the narrow alleyway brought him within arm's reach of Billy. He swatted the fleeing thug on the top of the head with a huge, gauntleted fist. His prodigious height gave him a big advantage.

The thug who tried to run away immediately crumpled to the ground. No scream. No yelp, nothing. He didn't even moan in pain once he fell. He was just…lying there.

Shrugging, Billy decided that he'd just been knocked out thanks to his new super-strength. He proceeded further down the alley, in slow, deliberate steps. He didn't realize how menacing the effect was, but his enhanced sense of smell detected the stench of urine coming from more than one of the gangsters, now. "Ewww…" He would've pinched his nose in disgust if not for the big helmet in his way.

Almost as if…reading his mind, the filters on his helmet started to cycle the oxygen to filter out the unpleasant smell now permeating the alleyway.

In a blind panic, the gang-leader threw his pistol at Billy with all of his might…Only for Billy to catch it in midair on reflex! Wow! This new body sure was nifty. He didn't even have a second to think, he just grabbed the gun as it sailed through the air.

And then something else happened. The gun…melted…right in his hand. It started glowing an ominous red color, and light red flames engulfed the fist holding the melting pistol. But…he didn't feel any heat. No, the flames that licked the air in an almost violent, thrashing manner actually felt freezing to the touch. The air around him grew cold.

The molten, liquid metal that had once been a simple, ordinary pistol wielded by a random gangster in downtown Fawcett became something…more. It shaped itself into his hand, and even seemed to expand. The thugs that cowered at the back of the alleyway looked on in dawning awe and horror as their once most powerful weapon was perverted and twisted into a form beyond their mortal recognition.

Billy, for his part, was intrigued. His eyes widened in fascination as the pistol actually morphed into a whole new shape. The flames brightened, and brightened, until it hurt to look upon. And then, they disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and the air returned to normal temperature again.

What was left in his right hand was not the same pistol that he had caught so reflexively. It greatly resembled his own armor, now, in fact. He inspected the weapon gingerly and brought it closer to his helm's eye-visors.

The sleek and simplified form of the pistol-he didn't know what it was called, but it was the kind that everyone always uses on TV and in movies-was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it had become a boxy, angular thing. It had a single, thick tube that he guessed was the barrel for the gun. Underneath it were two smaller tubes-still the circumference of his forearms before he was transformed-that led into an encasing structure that looked like swiss cheese. Five circular little holes were drilled into it's sides in a pattern with one hole in the center and the other four forming a square formation around it. There was a ridged pump on the underside of the gun, and behind it was a large slot with a sickle-shaped magazine stuck in it. On either side of the box that formed the main chassis of the gun was a scary-looking skull with sharpened fangs over an eight-pointed star, bolted into the gun with rivets at the end of each point.

_A gun…? But…I've never used a gun before!_ He thought. Guns _killed_ people. He didn't want to _kill_ these guys…just teach them a lesson and scare them a little so they wouldn't hurt people anymore…

The huge armament was surprisingly light in his hands, and he brandished it gingerly. Maybe there was a way he could use it without actually hurting these guys…

"Listen to me…" He told the terrified and awestruck thugs. The woman seemed to have fainted where she lay on the ground. She'd probably experienced more trauma today that she had…well, ever. "You will _never _hurt _anyone _again!" He shouted, trying to do his best Darth Vader impression. He was significantly more successful this time than he had been ever before, as his booming voice seemed to shake the very foundations of the alleyway, trashcans, dumpsters, and wall-mounted fire escapes.

The thugs vigorously nodded their heads in assent. Several of them had their hands folded together in prayer, and one of them even held a gold cross necklace that had been decorating his neck. Billy sneered at them. They sure hadn't been very religious a few minutes ago! "You'll also take that lady to the hospital, and when they ask how she got that way, you'll tell the truth and turn yourself in to the police!" If they wanted forgiveness from _anyone_, let alone _Jesus_, they'd have to earn it.

Most of them simply continued to meekly nod in agreement, sweating in fear and on their knees, kneeling before him. The two who'd been taunting the woman earlier, though- they looked at each other with raised eyebrows. They appeared to be having second thoughts. Billy decided that some more persuasion was in order for those two hooligans.

"If not…" he began menacingly. He lifted the massive-yet somehow easily lifted with only his right hand-gun into the air. He put his left hand on the ridged pump so he could hold it like a rifle. He'd seen Al Pacino and Rambo hold guns like that.

However, when he was about to administer a stern warning in this intimidating pose, the pump actually gave way to his strong hand and pushed into the boxy slot of the gun. He then learned what the second two barrels and swiss-cheese thing was for.

Without warning, a jet of blood-red, searing hot flames spewed out of the gun like it was some kind of literal "fire-hose". The very air around him seemed to get a hundred degrees hotter.

It was probably a lot more than that, though. The fire escapes, ironically, had turned white hot and the metal bars that made them up melted in a quick flash as the flames sprayed them. The molten metal rained down on some trash bins and a dumpster, which began to billow red smoke as they were melted through by the intensely hot remains of the fire escape. Luckily, no one had been standing close enough to that side of the alley to get caught by the melted iron or any of his gun's flames. Billy quickly removed his hand from the underside of the ridged pumping mechanism on the bottom of the gun that he now realized triggered an attached flamethrower.

The intended effect had been accomplished, though, as the thugs who had previously begun to doubt that they should heed him were now thoroughly convinced. Extra-thoroughly, if the dark stains spreading in their blue jeans were any indication. Just to be sure, though, Billy added. "You will be next." In his deepest, most ominous voice yet. He stepped to one side of the Alley, while being careful not to get his cape set on fire by the still white hot ruins of the fire escape. "Go!" He yelled, now kind of enjoying himself. It was fun to be able to boss people around for a change! "Do as I commanded you! Before I change my mind!" They seemed to respond better if he just talked like he really _was_ as scary as he looked.

The thugs responded immediately, picking up the woman with great care holding their religious symbols tightly to their chests and crying tears of joy or terror. Perhaps both. They ran in the direction of Beck Memorial Hospital as fast as their legs would carry them, and Billy nodded in satisfaction. Sure, the alley was wrecked, but he had done a good deed and saved an innocent woman from a terrible ordeal.

He frowned as he looked at the scary looking gun/flamethrower in his hands. He had some fun using it to scare those guys straight, sure, but it's not like he could just carry it around with him. It was against the law! Sure, he might've looked evil before, but he'd really be a criminal if he just carried a gun around without a license. Besides, there wasn't any holster or anything on his belt where he could put it, and his arm would probably get tired of carrying it eventually, even if it was surprisingly light in his grip.

But the problem solved itself a moment later, and he gasped in surprise. In a flash of bright red light and smoke, it disappeared! Wow! That was convenient. He might actually miss it a little, as it had come in handy, but then the rational part of his mind told him that although he might look like a grownup, he was still a kid on the inside and probably shouldn't be messing around with guns.

But right before he quashed his thoughts of missing his cool weapon with his surprisingly mature logic, another flash of red light and another poof of smoke flashed in his hand. "What the…?" he muttered, mildly surprised. After everything else that'd happened today, it'd be a wonder if anything ever _really_ shocked him again…

"Hmmm…" Acting on a hunch, Billy thought about the weapon disappearing again. Sure enough, another flash of red flames and a puff or reddish smoke later, the gun disappeared. He tried thinking about having the gun in his hands again, and it reappeared with the same effect. "Huh…" He said to himself ponderingly as he willed the gun away again. "So…If I think about having the gun, it'll appear right in my hands… And if I want to put it away, I just think about it disappearing. Neat." He decided not to think about it for now. The problem was solved, and he had a weapon he could use to protect himself or scare away bad guys now.

All of this only served to distract him, though. He may have saved that woman, but the night wasn't going to last forever, and he knew it'd be bad for him to get caught outside during the day when people were around to see him.

So he walked out of the alley, intent on finding a hiding place before the sun came up. As an orphan living on the streets, he was familiar with a few such places that could be used to hide if things got hairy for some reason. He didn't really have any important possessions besides a blanket and some spare clothes that he'd hidden at the homeless "camp" in an abandoned subway tunnel across town. There were a lot of them around ever since the city ran out of money and had to cancel the project.

Even if he could get to them without being seen, his clothes wouldn't fit him anymore and the armor was surprisingly warm in the cold west-coast night. He'd just have to leave them there, Maybe one of his friends would take them if he didn't show up for a while.

He didn't know what he was going to do, but he did know that he needed to be somewhere else by morning, and he knew just the place to lay low.

With that in mind, Billy began to jog to his destination, keeping off the sidewalk so it wouldn't get crushed and have to be replaced.

He thought he was forgetting something, though…but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. After a few minutes of drawing a blank, he pushed it to the back of his mind and focused on finding the fastest and most discreet route to his destination.

* * *

In the darkness of the alleyway, where the newest champion of the ruinous powers had saved an innocent life with nothing more than a casual and stumbling show of a modicum of his awesome power, the air crackled with the residual energy left behind by his mere presence.

Forgotten by his friends, his victim, and Billy Batson, a young man lay in a growing pool of blood.

His future had never been particularly bright, but there had always been a chance that he could go straight. Turn over a new lead, reform. The other gangsters that had encountered what appeared to them to be Satan himself roused from hell by their sins, for instance, would all follow the monster's instructions to the letter. They wouldn't leave the hospital until they'd ensured that the young woman they had assaulted and intended to violate was checked in to the emergency room. They waited for the police to show up and went with them freely and without any kind of a fight.

Weeks later, at their trial for the incident, all six of them would plead guilty. They refused every deal offered to them by the DA even though the majority of them were only first-strikers, the memory of the Chaos' chosen charity burned into their mind forever. They would remember it for the rest of their lives.

They all became born-again Christians, pledging themselves to reform and apologizing for their barbaric actions. They became model prisoners, and vowed never to break the law again. Most of them were up for parole within a year, and finished their probation without incident. Every day of their new lives, they thanked the lord for sparing their lives and offering them a chance at redemption. At the opportunity to turn their lives around before they got in too deep to the criminal lifestyle. They had learned a harsh lesson in that alley.

After all, not all of them got the opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

One of them had tried to run. He had tried to run, and was casually swatted aside by the destroying, fallen angel that had ambushed them to show them what awaited their lives of sin. The only difference between him and the rest of the gangsters had been that he was a true coward at heart, and always fled rather than standing his ground. He had paid the price for his craven ways.

The young man lying in face down in the alley did not get up that morning. He never got up.

His brains had been jellified, by a single, casual blow.

When the body was found by the authorities during the investigation into the woman's charges and the thugs' confessions, the detectives were baffled. What kind of weapon could have caused _that? _

The young woman's memory was cloudy at best, possibly from the trauma of the attempted sexual assault and the preceding vicious beating. When questioned, the gangsters absolutely refused to speak even a single whisper as to what happened to their friend. Even under threats of extended sentencing or offers of leniency deals, all of them steadfastly held their silence. They took the secret to their graves.


	2. Chapter 2 : A Lesson Learned

**A/N : Reviews: **

**Mr. I Hate Znt Nobles**** N' Kill 'EM**

**Perhaps. But Billy doesn't exactly have any real concept of actual ironic punishment at this point. He'd still rather defer to the proper authorities. This is of course subject to change as time goes on.**

**Sandrake111**

**Thank you. I agree that Billy will certainly have his differences with the superhero community, but he's still a ten year old on the inside. Any shift towards an anti-heroic personality will take time, and be a gradual thing. As for Malal, I _have_ heard the name in passing, but it was my understanding that he was retconned out when confusion arose over who owned the character. As I'm not familiar with the character and wish to keep the chaos god's down to four (For now), I don't have an current plans on incorporating Malal into the story. **

**Jouaint & Warmaster Tzeentch **

**Thank you. I intend to continue with this story for the time being, as well as all my stories. This will most likely be my last new story until at least summer break, at which point I'll have more time to write and thus more time to update my older stories as well as this one.**

* * *

Fawcett City had been hurt badly by the recession. Businesses closed, loans defaulted, and buildings were condemned due to lack of maintenance. A lot of the majorcorporations that had called Fawcett home had moved on to greener pastures. While it was still a big city, Fawcett had taken a back-seat in terms of the national limelight as Metropolis became America's premiere business and economic powerhouse. Even cities like Gotham with serious crime, poverty, and public health issues attracted more dollars than Fawcett, usually with extremely lax business regulation legislation voted in for precisely that purpose.

Consequentially, abandoned warehouses like this one were an all too common sight at the docks and around the harbor. During its heyday, Fawcett was a major maritime trading hub, so there was a lot of leftover infrastructure not currently in use by anyone. This was to the advantage of orphans like Billy, who would often take shelter in warehouses, subway tunnels, or old buildings. Billy was using this particular warehouse for just that purpose at the moment.

He had managed to make record time when he snuck over to the harbor, still two hours before dawn. Of course, the wharves had been far from empty. Plenty of sailors and dock-loaders or other workers were already up, loading ships with cargo and getting ready to depart on their voyage. Fortunately, there were a lot more alleyways to duck into whenever he saw someone coming in the tightly packed, low buildings of the docks.

A few people had caught a glimpse of him at one point or another, but that was all. Just a shadow over in the alleys, or the end of cape rounding the corner. People tended to disregard such things as mere tricks of the light. His footfalls were the real issue.

Obviously his enormous mass and weight made it difficult for him to sneak effectively. He compensated for this with taking extremely soft footsteps wherever he could. He avoided sidewalks or anything that could be knocked over, and had to hunch his back just to avoid being seen _over_ some of the smaller buildings.

Fortunately, he had made it to the warehouse before dawn. The wire fence over the abandoned building had done laughably little to deter him, and he carefully chose a spot where the support poles met and simply uprooted one for a moment to move the wire mesh aside. When he was done, he carefully placed the stake back into the ground where it had been planted and stuck it there again. The fence looked pretty disheveled after that, but most people would probably just attribute it to the wear and tear of Fawcett's industrial decay.

The building itself was essentially just a series of hallways and one very large room at the center of the building. The hallways were devoid of light bulbs, windows, or anything else really. There were still some boxes crate platforms lying around and a lot of papers and trash was scattered across the floor, but that was it.

The main room at the center of the building was a high, three-story equivalent ceilinged storage hold. Huge stacks of boxes, crates, and containers were all stacked in rows or adjacently. Billy knew from experience that most of these would be empty or full of those foam peanut-shaped things that were supposed to protect whatever was inside. The boxes all turned the room into a gigantic maze of aluminum, plastic, and wood.

Billy had always needed a flashlight when he used to hide out in buildings like this before. Now, though, even though there were no lights and the room _should_ be pitch black darkness, he had no trouble seeing everything clearly. He could actually read the labels and brands on the crates at one end of the room from the other end.

His footsteps echoed throughout the empty and voluminous building over and over as he wandered through the maze of empty stacks of boxes and crates. He eventually found a good spot to sit down and think for awhile, at the center of the room. It was a square-shaped clearing in the boxes, and there was a forklift there in the corner.

This was the first time that he had really had to stop and think about what to do. Before, when he was…normal, all of his time had been spent scrounging and scrimping, diving through dumpsters for scraps of food and scouring the streets for pennies. Everything he did, he did because it was necessary for him in order to survive on the harsh and unforgiving streets.

But now that wasn't even his biggest problem. True, even though it'd already been almost a whole day, he had yet to begin to thirst or hunger. His stomach didn't growl and his throat didn't get dry. It was almost like he didn't even need food or sustenance anymore. Maybe he didn't.

But that was a comparatively minor issue. The real problem hear was that his current form and appearance made a normal life of any kind almost impossible. Billy wasn't stupid. He knew that anyone that saw him just walking down the street would completely freak out. The behavior of the thugs he'd scared off in the alley downtown was clear evidence in that regard; His mere arrival and visage had prompted gunshots and violence, as well as fear. Pure terror had replaced arrogant and naked aggression when they realized that their very limited firepower was useless against him. When he'd somehow turned that weapon into the flamethrower-gun he could now summon at will, they'd crumpled completely.

But what could Billy do? He may be big, now, but he was still just a kid on the inside. He didn't have any real skills besides knowing how to just barely survive on the streets, and he apparently didn't have any immediate needs to fulfill. He'd considered trying to change back…to become human again…but honestly? He couldn't find any reason to want that.

Before, he'd just been another orphan wandering the streets of Fawcett city in vagrancy. Now…He had was some kind of awesome medieval sci-fi knight guy who'd scared off a _whole gang_ of thugs who even had a _gun!_ For the very first time in his life, Billy had _real _power. Not just the power to determine his _own_ fate, but also to alter the destiny of others.

It was daunting, yes, but also invigorating. For once, Billy's decisions really mattered. He'd been given a chance by those…ghosts, spirits, whatever they were…to really make a difference.

Billy knew what he had to do. He swore, to himself and to his dead parents who'd gone before their time due to the negligent and callous actions of another, that he would use this power for good. It had been a good thing he'd done last night, saving that woman's life. He would do it again if he could, a thousand times more. He wasn't just some orphan anymore. He was a hero.

* * *

Morning came and went, and night fell upon Fawcett City once more. Billy had done a lot of thinking, that day, and had made his decision for the future of his new life.

He would be the hammer of justice, striking where the police couldn't or the courts wouldn't. He would be a hero, a vigilante of justice and the protector of the innocent. He'd be like Zorro, or the Masked Avenger. Or like that Bat-Dude or Superguy they were always talking about on the news nowadays! He had his helmet to obscure his face, so he supposed he had the mask part down-pat. Not that anyone would recognize him anyways, because obviously it wasn't _his_ face to begin with.

Of course, Billy had needed to avoid the streets during the day. This left him with a lot of time on his hands with which to concoct his plans as he paced through the warehouse maze. He found that the process was surprisingly easy.

For some reason, as he brainstormed on how to best go about his newly chosen career as a crimefighter, several ideas had immediately come to mind. It was almost like his brain had been completely rewired to be able to find a logical and rational solution to any problem, no matter how abstract. Upon investigating this new ability, he found out that he was now really good at math and stuff. It sure would've come in handy before he dropped out of school.

Anyways, his first and initial idea had been to prowl the streets or leap across the rooftops in search of evildoers. Of course, even though his jumping and running around in the warehouse when he got bored earlier had proven that he was almost certainly capable of such feats despite his mass, his newly analytical and logical mind soon deduced that that method would be perilously inefficient and very likely to get him caught by the cops or some guy's cellphone camera. Although some small, childish part of him would have relished the media attention, he intellectually realized that it would probably be more trouble than it was worth. He had seen how the media circus loved to find scandals and faults with celebrities and actors on TV, and he imagined that the effect would only be magnified if they found out about a real-live superhero. Besides, it wasn't really being a hero if you did it for the attention. Good was supposed to be it's own reward. Or at least, that's what all the comic books he'd ever read always seemed to agree on.

The next method that came to mind made a lot more sense to him. The idea was that he would wait until nightfall- then he would comb the warehouses and wharves nearby for some kind of smuggling mafia types or something. If that course of action bore no fruit, he would move on to the alleyways in the north side. The north side had a lot of low-income housing and some small businesses in the better areas, but the police didn't have as strong of a presence there as they did in downtown or the suburbs on the south side. Billy had been there a lot in his time as an orphan, along with many other homeless families and children. He knew that a lot of crime went on in that area of town unpunished, especially at night.

Billy stalked through the alleyways slowly and crouched like a ninja from a kung-fu movie. Apparently, that pose really _did_ work, as his footsteps became much less pronounced and obvious as long as he was careful.

There were several dozen warehouses at the docks, all owned by some different company or another. The abandoned ones were always closed up by a metal fence or boarded up with wooden planks, but criminals probably wouldn't bother with them. In gangster movies, the crooks always had "sit-downs" or meetings in warehouses at the docks whenever the wanted to make a deal or something. Or maybe gun-runners would be selling illegal firearms smuggled in from Russia. Or they were Somali pirates or Iraqi terrorists or something.

Unfortunately, the pickings seemed to be slim that night. He searched all over the warehouses, as much as possible without actually breaking in. A lot of them had windows he could peek through thanks to his height. There were no signs of gangsters or forced entry into any of the active warehouses, or any of the other businesses that operated out of the harbor. It was around 2 a.m. before Billy finally decided to call it quits at the docks area.

Or at least, he was about to. But he caught sight of something intriguing further down the docks.

There were a couple of men, youngish and wearing typical business wear and sauntering over by one of the cargo docks. Those big, rectangular metal red and green boxes that were always on cargo ships were stacked up around them, obscuring Billy's view. He could actually make out their features even from here thanks to his enhanced vision. They all had dark hair, and one of them had a neatly trimmed beard and sunglasses. Their appearance here was suspicious, he decided, especially since they clearly weren't dockworkers. At the very least it warranted investigation. He tried to tell himself he wasn't just grasping at straws because this was literally the only suspicious activity he'd detected all night at the docks, even with his enhanced senses.

He made out their voices as he slowly snuck over to that area of the docks, careful to remain outside of their field of vision and making sure to keep his footsteps quiet. His black armor helped a little, but the glowing ruby red eye-decorations and the golden trim sort of negated any potential benefit from that. He had summoned his pistol earlier that night, before he even left his warehouse. He'd decided that it was better safe than sorry, and he might need it if they had any big weapons like a rocket launcher or something. He was again surprised by how light it felt despite it's huge bulk. It would've been impossible for any normal grownup to wield it effectively, but he could keep it in one-handed grip indefinitely and almost forget he was holding it.

"So, what'd the boss say we was supposed to be doin' out here?" Asked a gruff voice from the interior of the outdoor shipping-crate maze.

"He just said to get the package. That's all we gotta do. S'all we get paid to do. Just get the package from crate S7108815- let's see…that should be…that one!" A second voice responded, apparently having found their quarry. _Boss, huh? _Billy thought. _Must be some kind of secret smuggling ring or something coming to retrieve their ill-gotten gains. Not if I have anything to say about it!_

He made his way into the alley between the crates.

To say that the three sharply dressed goons were surprised to see him would have been an understatement. Unlike the thugs he had frightened off in the alleyway, these guys immediately drew their guns and Billy heard the distinctive clicking sound of a hammer being cocked three times.

"Who the hell are you?!" Asked the man with the neatly trimmed beard. Billy's response was to take another step closer to them and say

"I am…" Billy remembered that he had yet to think of a proper superhero name for himself. But, he supposed, none of the superheroes ever did. In all of the comics he'd ever read, the media or the townspeople would always come up with the name. Shrugging, he continued ominously "…Your doom!"

The sunglasses wearing thug laughed out loud at that, albeit a little nervously. "Get a load of this joker, eh Lenny? I bet he's really just some fatass under that Halloween costume and that toy gun! Probably some 30-year old virgin comic book geek tryin' to be a hero…" The one called Lenny, over to the right, did not respond. He merely eyed Billy warily and kept his gun trained on his face.

Billy, hoping to show shades over there that he was no joke, prepared to execute a maneuver he'd seen done many times on TV and in movies and comic books. He accomplished his goal…though perhaps not in the way he had intended.

It had been simple. Billy was going to shoot the gun out of shades' hand, and look really cool and heroic while doing so. A perfect plan…

Except, Billy realized, only after he pulled the trigger, that he had no prior experience in the use of firearms or marksmanship. The resounding and deafening bang that sounded like a miniature explosion in his ears punctuated the point, as did the agonized scream the man he'd just shot let out as he crumpled to his knees.

Billy could only watch, in paralyzed horror with his arm going limp to his side, that he had…missed. He had been aiming for the gun in the man's hand, but had instead hit joint of his elbow. If it had a normal gun, it might not have been so bad…but this gun apparently used special ammunition, and the deadly effects were self-evident.

Where there had once been a muscular and toned arm leveling a pistol at Billy, there was…nothing. Blood spurted out from the shoulder area of the man's torso, as it appeared that his entire arm had simply exploded from the inside. A thin mist of blood had splattered all over the crates and the sunglasses wearing thug's compatriots. Billy didn't even notice or feel the bullets that ricocheted off of his armor as the man whose arm he had just blown off stopped writhing on the ground and simply lay still. A huge puddle of blood had pooled beneath him as his arm spewed the human ichor everywhere, and the man had been left to die by his friends who took cover behind some more crates over to the side of the wharf.

Billy…he…he had just…accidentally…_killed_ someone…

Billy shot someone. He had shot them-however accidentally- and they had died because of it.

What…_what had he done?!_

_Oh god, oh god…I…I didn't mean it! No, I didn't-I didn't mean for him to die! I didn't mean to kill him! I never wanted to hurt anyone! _He silently cried in his tusked helm.

Tears of horror and shock ran down his face…he felt like he should be on his knees, though…but his leg's were too strong to just fall and give way. What…what did that mean? He was too strong…but that didn't give him the right to kill anyone! So what if he was a bad guy?! Good guys aren't supposed to kill anyone…not even bad guys…

Billy realized then that he was in way over his head. He wasn't some good guy. He wasn't a superhero. That had become woefully apparent. He was just some _kid_, in over his depth…

The goons before him, of course, did not realize that. All they saw was a giant, terrifying monster in pitch black armor covered in golden skulls, spikes, and industrial wiring. They saw that he had a gun that could blow up a man's arm with a single shot, and that he was apparently very willing to use it. And if there's one kind of power a criminal respects- it's the power of a gun.

"Shit…Larry…"

"Fuck, man. We're sorry! You can have the package! We-we don't wanna die!"

Billy was too stunned to say anything. He…he had murdered a man…A man was dead because of him. He was no better than these criminals…

"Go." He gestured to behind him, stepping to one side of the crates. The two remaining felons dropped their guns to the ground immediately and bolted as fast as they could. They left Larry on the ground where he lay; forgotten.

Billy just stood there for awhile. It might have been hours. He took his helmet off again, because at some point while he was just standing there, he threw up. The bile from his stomach landed on the ground as he shook his helmet absently. It melted straight through the concrete foundation of the wharves, leaving a deep hole that led into the waters below. The hissing sound of melting concrete and the green smoke snapped him out of his daze.

Billy had killed a man tonight. Not on purpose, no, but it had happened. He would have to deal with that.

It was one thing to look like a bad guy, but it was another thing entirely to act like one.

After awhile, Billy sighed. He went over to Larry's corpse. The vacant eyes were creepy, and the look of horrified shock on his face wasn't very pleasant either. Billy dismissed his gun in disgust, and it vanished in a flash of red flames once more. He should've known better than to treat his powers like a toy…

Those four spirit guys were probably so disappointed in him! They'd shake their heads in remorse at having chosen such a foolish and thoughtless boy to give their powers too…He bet even now that they were coming to take their powers back…leaving behind only Billy Batson, once more a powerless orphan.

But they never came. After minutes or hours of waiting- he couldn't tell- He was still just standing there. It disgusted him how relieved he was that he'd get to keep his powers, when he decided that they weren't coming to take them back after all. Even after he'd used them to kill a man…Billy was still relieved that he wouldn't go back to being a plain old normal orphan. It sickened him.

Whenever a normal person killed someone, they had a trial and went to jail. Even if they didn't mean it or didn't do it on purpose. But…Billy didn't _want_ to go to jail…

It was a sad, pathetic excuse, he knew. There was _no_ justification to take an innocent life. And while Larry was almost certainly far from innocent (given his possession of a firearm, willingness to use it, and the obviously illegal nature of the package they were retrieving.) it had still been a life.

What would his parents say? What would they think that the son they'd left behind and sacrificed so much to raise up to when he was nine had turned out to be a killer? Billy didn't want to think about it. He wanted a way out.

He didn't know what to do. How could he make up for what he did? It was too late to fix anything…Larry's corpse had already grown cold and stiff. There was the 'package' they had been after…

Billy decided to at least look at it. A man had died because of he wanted to stop him from taking it…So it he should at least see what it was.

He opened the crate they had been trying to jimmy the lock on with contemptuous ease. Both of the doors flew of their axes and he let them fall to the ground.

Inside the crate was a single box, made of a sleek metal material that shone in the moonlight. At least, it did, until Billy's gargantuan shadow overtook the entrance and blocked out all of the light.

With subdued consternation, Billy realized that he couldn't actually fit into the crate. He was too big. He had to reach into it with his arm to the middle of the crate and drag the metal case forward with the edges of his fingers. It was only because his digits were so supernaturally strong that he was actually able to drag the heavy metal case to him using nothing but his fingertips.

Taking a closer look at it, he saw that it resembled a thick briefcase. It was locked on all four sides, which did little to deter him as he peeled the container apart by pulling the two parts of the case away from each other.

Inside was a black foam mold that contained a single object. Well, it was actually more of an artifact. It was made of a shining, chrome-like blue. It was shaped like a bug…with six legs and long pincers jutting from the front of the head. It had a round shell carapace for an abdomen. It looked like…a beetle.

But as Billy held it in his hands, the same bright light that once engulfed the pistol he'd caught in the alleyway sprung from nowhere to encompass the blue beetle relic now in his hand. He dropped it immediately, remembering all of the 'good' his gun had done him. But it was too late. The damage was already done.

The outer carapace of the blue beetle began to glow white hot, flames tinged with cobalt blue. As the chassis began to melt, advanced looking circuits actually began to be revealed. Glowing power cores, microchips, wires, and circuitry began to melt into the shifting and whirling vortex of liquid metal that had taken shape on the ground. It began to float up, in midair, even as the concrete beneath it turned to an arcing electrified crater of ash.

The flying whirlpool of white-hot glowing metal began to shift and turn and twist in the air. Billy's eyes widened in fascination, temporarily forgetting all about the corpse behind him even as it rotted away at an unnatural rate, already a partially skeletonized cadaver.

What was once an ethereal blue glow now took on a sickly green hue. The molten metal formed into a sphere in midair, hardening and cooling until it was the color of obsidian, but still haunted by green flames that almost made him feel nauseated to look upon. But his eyes kept their place, locked on to the black sphere now floating before him. It had brought itself to about chest-level before it ceased it's ascent, and now it began to _throb_ and _pulsate_ as if it were made of flesh rather than metal.

The black sphere took on a new shape, now. Spindly legs burst forth from the base even as pincers so sharp and serrated that they could have been used as an instrument of torture took form at the top of the sphere. It stretched and elongated, just a little, so that the abdomen was no longer a spherical shape but now more closely resembled an egg. It was no longer a blue beetle. It was now…a Black Scarab.

It…floated, still hanging from nowhere. Billy dodged to the left, avoiding it…But he was not its target. Larry, just a few feet behind him, was its mark. It floated downward, gradually, until the scarab rested on the chest of the dead gangster.

With sharp and jerky movements, the legs of the scarab began to animate. Before Billy could even think to do anything, they plunged into Larry's chest. Billy was shocked by the seemingly brutal and pointless action of the apparently living artifact, but did nothing. He allowed himself a sliver of hope. Maybe… maybe it was… No…there was no way that the world would be so generous.

Unseen by Billy, the tendrils of the Black Scarab sunk deeper and deeper into corpse's chest cavity. As they went, they injected a slimy, visceral green ooze that seeped into the veins and capillaries of the dead man's empty circulatory system.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the ruined the veins were filled. Glowing green blood seemed to fill every crevice of the body, until even the skin took on a sickly green color. The eyes themselves glowed green, and the glowing ooze began to seep from the man's missing arm stump. But it did not touch the ground.

No…instead, they simply suspended there, in the shape of veins, capillaries, muscle, and bone. More and more of the slime was added, until it gradually took on the shape of the dead man's arm. And slowly, ever so slowly, the tendrils in the heart began to emit a low electric pulse. Billy could only look on at the ritual, stupefied into silence with a twinge of hope and excitement.

The heart began to beat once again. The arm, now having taken full shape, was complete. It was a perfect and healthy and completely whole human appendage. The ooze began to alter, down to the molecular level. It shed its haunted and warp-tainted chemical components and expelled them in the form of a noxious gas that billowed from the now alive but not yet living man's mouth. The toxic gas gradually dissipated into the sea salt breeze of the docks, until it faded away into nothing.

Now that all of the unnatural and unholy chemical components had been ejected, the ooze had transformed into a more viscous and fluidic substance. It had become blood, and the veins were now red. The skin had returned to the same color that it had been before Billy had tragically shot the man by accident, and even the eyes changed back to sky blue from glowing green, the sunglasses once worn by the thug lying broken on the concrete foundation of the wharf.

Suddenly and without warning, Larry gasped for air. His lungs filled with the salty, ocean and fish scented air. For the first time in hours, his corpse drew breath. The unnatural rotting had reversed itself with the intervention of the Black Scarab, which now withdrew its tendrils and healed the wounds along their way out of his body. The Scarab floated again, once more, and quickly flew towards Billy. It came to a rest on his own chest, extending its pincers and curving them around his neck. The glowing green aura ceased along with whatever force allowed it to defy gravity, and the Scarab hung there from Billy's neck like some sort of macabre amulet.

Billy was in awe. He watched as the once dead gangster began to struggle to his knees, rapidly panting as he circulated air into his slightly deoxygenated bloodstream. Larry was alive!

His mistake, something that he would never have been able to make up or atone for, had been undone! Now that Larry was alive, it was like Billy had never killed him in the first place! _Wow,_ he thought, as he twirled the scarab hanging from his neck in his hand, _I really need to thank those ghost guys if I ever see them again. These powers…they even let me bring dead people back to life and-_

A stray thought crossed his mind, then. _If this thing brings dead people to life again, then maybe my parents-_

No. His parents wouldn't have wanted that. He knew. They had been good people. His analytical mind told him that they would be up in heaven now, settling there for over a year already now after a virtuous life. It wouldn't be right to take them all away from that just to fulfill his own selfish wishes.

That bird ghost had told him 'Now we shall see, what will you do with your power?' And Billy realized now what he had meant. These abilities…these powers…this form…they were a test. A test of character. Of personal strength and resolve.

The gun had been his first test, he now believed. He had been given power over other human beings. The power to kill. At first, he did well, only using it to scare the men in that alleyway. But tonight…tonight he had failed. Now he realized that he shouldn't have been treating such terrible power like a toy. He should have been more responsible, more careful. He should have shown such power the respect it deserved.

He regarded the scarab hanging from his neck. This one must be the second test.

The Black Scarab gave him the power to bring the dead back to life. That much was plain to see. But now, now the real test came.

He had, mercifully, been able to reverse his mistake in accidentally _killing_ Larry. He got the feeling that something like that was probably not going to happen if he misused the Scarab, though. The power to kill was nothing new. People had been killing each other for thousands of years. But the power to resurrect the dead? Nothing had that power. Nothing…except the Scarab.

If he used it to bring back his parents, just because he missed them and wanted to be with them, he would be tearing them away from…whatever afterlife they had been in for the last year. What if they were in heaven, now? What if he was taking them away from a paradise and happiness that they had earned in life? What if they hated him for that? He wanted to take them away from the eternal rest that they'd rightfully earned just so that they could come down to Earth again and raise him, which was made more complicated by his new body…In fact, he probably didn't need parents in order to survive now…It would just be a selfish wish on his part. It wasn't like bringing back Larry, who he killed this very night. That was his responsibility. It hadn't been God's choice to take Larry back. His life had been cut short by a careless shot from a foolish child. And that child had most fortuitously reversed his mistake.

Billy made a vow, then. He vowed that he would use the Scarab responsibly, as a force for good. He wouldn't use it to fulfill his own selfish desires. Instead, he would use it as a tool to protect the innocent and those whose lives were undeservedly cut short.

Billy turned around to go, his mind full of whirling thoughts. His head was positively spinning, trying to wrap itself around the night's events. But before he left, he remembered Larry.

He looked down at the helpless and exhausted gangster. He was alive, but only just. He was getting better though, by the looks of it, as he no longer looked half dead as he had when he first re-entered the world of the living.

When Larry saw Billy looking his way, though, his own eyes shot open in alarm. Doubtlessly he was remembering dying by Billy's hands. Billy winced at the memory that was so fresh in his mind but seemed so long ago.

"No…no please! Not again! Please don't kill me again! I…I want to live! I want to live!" A new energy took Larry, and he crawled away from Billy, dragging his prone body on the hard concrete ground.

Billy opened his mouth to respond. "I…" He thought for a moment. Sure, Larry was alive now, but Billy _had_ still killed him. Billy decided that the criminal had probably learned his lesson about the inherent risks involved in 'the business', and would now probably do his best to find a way out. "Go!" Billy pointed to the harbor, away from the sea. "Leave this place, and pray that we never meet again!"

Larry nodded his head frantically in assent, and righted himself with his arms. He somehow summoned the strength to limp away from the wharf, and he had entered the maze of buildings in the fish markets in the harbor in just a minute or two.

And so ended Billy's first day 'on the prowl' as a real-life superhero. It had been a very productive one, in his opinion. Not only did he learn a very valuable lesson of the responsibility that came with such awesome power, but also gained a powerful new tool in his quest to protect the innocent from the evil.

The sun would be up in an hour or two. There were already a few fishermen and dock workers up and about, ready to get a head start on their day. Billy did his best to keep out of sight as he headed back to his warehouse-hideout.

* * *

_Days later, Casa Cardenas_

_El Paso, Texas_

Billy's recent lesson may have been an important learning experience, and the chance to get an impressive addition to his arsenal, but it would have far-reaching consequences for the days ahead. Unbeknownst to Billy, the newly dubbed Black Scarab had once been a very rare and valuable artifact of mysterious origins. An artifact that a very wealthy collector had paid a very large sum to be delivered to her home discreetly, and with prompt haste.

So it was understandable that when Amparo Cardenas, known to all but her closest of associates and relatives as the ruthless and enigmatic crime-lady La Dama, heard the news about how her gofers had somehow lost a priceless and irreplaceable artifact of immeasurable occult power, she was rather angry. No, she was downright livid.

"What do you _mean_ you were intercepted?" She asked tersely. The _men-_and she used that term loosely-cowered down further before her. Her suit-clad and armed enforcers blocked the only exit from her foyer where she received these incompetent fools. "I ensured that la policía were paid off for the whole week. None of them would have stopped you. None of the rival gangs knew about this…Unless one of you is a tablero…" The angry Latina woman hissed. Her ordinarily stunning features were marred by rage. She did not become the most feared Capo of the Latin-American Mafia and a woman by being soft.

"No! No, Ma'am, that's not it at all!" Pleaded a man with medium length raven hair and sharp features. Amparo might have found him handsome, in any other situation.

"Idiota! Shut up and tell me what happened, before I change my mind and just have you feed my piranhas…personally." She wasn't bluffing. You'd be surprised how many alchemical recipes had piranha scales as a supplementary component. She was always sure to keep a healthy supply of them in stock…and they had other uses as well, such as making an example out of people who crossed her.

"W-we went to the docks like you told us…we found the container, a-nd we was gonna open it up and get the package…but then…**he** showed up." His voice went quiet towards the end, and unusually cold. For the briefest of moments, Amparo _thought_ she felt a chill run up her spine. She raised an eyebrow. A normal person might have disregarded such a circumstantial sign, but her dabbling in the occult led her to believe that such things should be heeded by the savvy capo.

"Continue" She said neutrally, but it was obvious by her expression that her rage was only barely constrained. The thug kneeling before her nodded and did so, while the others kept their peace. Amparo took note of the haunted expressions on their face, though…

"We got stopped…" His hollow voice rang out like a sloth on a cold day, drawling on in a disturbing monotone. "But not by no man. He…he was…a monster." Amparo rolled her eyes.

"Describe him." She ordered glibly, curious as to what sort of man might have such an effect on these supposedly hardened criminals.

"He was twelve feet tall, and wore this…this black armor. He was right on us as soon as we got to the docks…"

"Black Armor? _Twelve_ _feet tall_?" Amparo scoffed. "What, like some kind of _gigante basquetbol_ _caballero?_

"No…No. He looked like something out of a horror movie…or outta hell. It was covered in all these…these _things" _He waved his arms in the air, and Amparo was momentarily taken aback when his haunted eyes rose to meet hers. "These, these skulls and these _eyes!_ The eyes! They, it was, it was like they was followin' us around…His armor had these big, red eyes that looked…they looked right into your soul…" Tears began to well up in the grown man's eyes as he recounted the memory, and Amparo found herself…intrigued, despite herself. He wasn't even finished. "He-he-he hurt! He hurt, just to look at!" His crying intensified until it developed into full-on sobbing. "He had this thing…this gun. It was…It was _huge. _He held this big rifle in one hand and…and…he shot Larry! He killed him, just like that! Just one shot, and the next thing we know, Larry's arm explodes and I'm…We-we're covered in blood and guts and bone and stuff…" His cries began to annoy her, so she gestured for Andre to remove him and his cohorts. She would deal with them later. Not with her piranhas, but death was certainly still on the table. She just didn't want to give the little cuties indigestion.

"Looks like it was a good thing you called me after all, La Dama." Came a smooth voice from the corner of the foyer. He had just been sitting there, in the shadows, on top of an antique chair. Amparo grimaced. She supposed he was right. If what those incompetent, useless goons had told her was true, none of her…_conventional_…annoyance removal agents would do for this one. "It's one of them…" he finished, stepping into the light for the first time. She grimaced at his garish costume.

He wore somewhat conventional, if heavy, steel plates over a black jumpsuit. He wore steel-toed combat boots and heavy steel knuckles.

But the most striking feature of the get-up was the thin yet fully encompassing metallic helmet-one side painted some kind of coppery orange color and the other pitch black. The coppery side had a single eyehole to see through and the mouth region had four narrow rectangular slits for breathing.

"Bring him to me." She said simply. There was a chance that he-whoever or _whatever_ he was- would have hidden the Beetle, and would require…persuasion, to reveal its location. Besides, his armor might make a nice decoration for her study.

"And Deathstroke-" She warned. "-You'd better not screw this up."

He somehow seemed to give off the impression of a grin through that ridiculous mask of his, and he gave a short, mocking bow. "As you wish, 'My Lady'" And vanished. He seemed to _melt_ into the shadows, not from sorcery or high-tech gadgets, but from years of training and mercenary experience. She may talk down to him in order to maintain face, but she was actually fairly confident that if anyone in her employ could get to the bottom of this, it'd be Slade Wilson, or as he was now calling himself, Deathstroke the Terminator.

* * *

While the most recent yet unwitting addition to the disciples of the dark gods was making a stir of things on Ancient Terra, the ripples of his effects had a far greater impact than even Tzeentch could have predicted. Indeed, the very nature of the dimension that the Daemon's had conspired to make their dumping ground for good deeds disallowed them from any further direct intervention from this side of the warp. Traveling so far between dimensions, space, and time had left even their prodigious energies somewhat drained. So now, they rested, if only for a short time. And while their servants still rampaged across the galaxy with insane vigor, the dark gods themselves were content to merely observe for the time being.

"…What did you say, Farseer?" Asked the melodious voice of Taldeer, his confidant. For her part, she viewed him as something of a mentor or father figure. He supposed it was only natural, given his advanced years and their shared path of the seer.

"I see tidings of doom…" He said. There was no point in denying the truth. If anything, denial would only serve to assure the path of destruction was the one taken. By him and her and by _all_ of their kind.

"Doom?" She asked.

The most esteemed and powerful of all Eldar Farseer's nodded. Only his raw power tempered by centuries upon centuries of experience allowed him to catch even the faintest glimmer of a vision of what was yet to come, and if truth be told; _It frightened him._

Even through his stoic countenance, the feeling was too strong. He ordinarily prided himself on his composure, but the threat was so great! Taldeer reached out to him in concern.

"Doom. For Ulthwé, for us…for everyone. The Tau…the Mon'Keigh…All of us are threatened."

Taldeer's smooth face adopted a look of greater concern now, but her brow furrowed in determination. "Then we must fight to preserve our home." She said, with authority and conviction.

"I am glad you agree." He said truthfully. "For my vision revealed to me but one course of action that might steer us away from ruin and death, and your participation is of paramount importance. "

"I see…" She said. She then locked eyes with him, with steely resolve. "What must I do? Where must I go to combat this threat?" She demanded.

"Not where…" He replied cryptically. "Or rather, less where and more when."

"…What?" She asked him, even her considerable intellect confused by his words.

"The Ruinous Powers are crafty, and they have grown more cunning still." He explained. "For they have levied a threat to us not here where we may fight them with our superior weapons and sorceries, but rather, they have chosen to tear open a rift in time itself…spitting their essence into the past where none might obstruct their way." His words were a growl, and he spat out the name of his hated foes.

"Then…how are we to confront them…?" Taldeer asked, now less sure of her ability to defend the craftworld. Understandable, given the circumstances.

"I will bring us there." He allowed, much to her surprise.

"But…how?"

He grinned sardonically. "The warp, while chaos and destruction may churn it's foul winds, has it's uses."

And with that, the obelisk in the center of the antechamber began to glow an eerie and ethereal blue aura. Taldeer's jaw slackened in surprise, but only momentarily. She regained her composure a moment later, but her eyes narrowed. "…I never had any choice in this, did I?" She asked quietly.

He shook his head. "Fate rarely alters it's course at the whims of mortals." He said mistily. "Besides…this is bigger than you and I. If you had refused my call, untold trillions would suffer for it, among our own race and the infants."

"Why would I have refused?" She bristled at the implied mark on her honor in the eyes of the man she most admired. "Have you not made clear the severity of this Chaos plot? Do you believe I would not die in a moment to protect the craftworld and my people?" She asked hotly.

He made a placating gesture. "Certainly not. I meant no insult. Merely…travelling through the warp in this manner can be…" He gestured to the glowing obelisk at the center of the room, which right at that very moment arced out towards them. The winds of the warp licked out at them even as the event horizon opened up a hole in space and time before them. The screeching of vicious daemons and maddening monstrosities was barely a whisper beyond the aegis of the webway, but it was there. Only a whisper…but always there. "…Somewhat daunting."

She found herself contemplating the floor, trying not to look into the terrible portcullis that practically oozed uncertainty and terror. "…Is there no other way…?" She asked, in a hushed, whispering tone.

He shook his head in the negative. "No. And we have little choice in the matter." He intoned. "After all…When there is no other way, the perilous path is the only road to salvation." And with that, he stepped through the portal and it flashed with power. Only his formidable skill and raw power in the ways of the warp allowed him to sail through it so unmolested…wherever his destination was.

Drawing a deep breath-one that might be her last if her own power was not equal to the challenges of the warp- she followed after him.

* * *

**I thought I might want to clarify a few things here. This won't strictly be a Young Justice universe story, but will be set between the Warhammer Universe and a blend of several aspects of the DCU. So far, my plans include elements of the New 52, Young Justice, Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, and several miscellaneous entries in the DCAU. **

**As for Taldeer and (SPOILER ALERT) Eldrad, I apologize if there is any OOC-ness with their representation. I'm not all that familiar with either of them and I only know of Eldrad from his Wiki article. If any of you want to point out any discrepencies, feel free to do so. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It's a little shorter than usual and the last part may feel a little rushed, but I have less time to work on my writing with exams coming up. I might come back and edit this chapter later if reviews are negative enough.**


	3. Chapter 3 : Time And Punishment

**A/N : reviews :**

**Jouaint : Perhaps.**

**Eipok : Thanks for the feedback. I'm a little confused as to what you're referring to, but I'll try to take another look at the chapter. Also, I have considered the Eldar conundrum, and rest assured that it will be explained in future chapters.**

**Sanddrake 11 : The Imperium and the rest of the Eldar don't even know anything is wrong (aside from the usual everyday life-in-the 41st millennium hardships). The only reason Eldar knew to travel back in time through the warp was because of his _considerable_ psychic powers - which were also the only way he was able to manipulate the warp (using a device he built, **** only possible due to his 10k+ years of Eldar superscience experience). The point is that Eldrad's method of transit was unique and impractical on any large scale anyways. He would've_ liked_ to take a battlefleet or two, but he was simply incapable of controlling the warp to such a precise degree on such a large scale. Also, both of those things would completely derail the plot (except perhaps in place of the Thanagarian Fleet that briefly conquers Earth).**

**Eipok : I... wasn't aware of that. Sorry.**

**MatchingTies : Thanks!**

**Reviews and feedback of any kind are appreciated, particularly constructive criticism. I hope you enjoy the next chapter.**

* * *

"Command Drone, we have information that may be of interest to you…" Droned one of the, appropriately named, drones from the base of his dais. Lu-Kreeza nodded in the affirmative, giving the lowly drone beneath him the go-ahead to say his piece.

"Approximately 1 hour and twelve minutes ago, we received a distress signal from a previously lost Infiltrator unit." The drone continued, it's vacant stare betraying it's relatively low intelligence. Command Drones like Lu-Kreeza were necessary to provide the military forces of The Reach with direction and semi-independent leadership capable of creative thinking on the spot. Lu-Kreeza was proud of his status as the elite among the multitudes.

"What damaged unit? I was unaware that we had lost any of our infiltrators in the last few cycles…" Indeed, the loss of such an investment would have warranted his attention. More than that, it would present a serious threat to The Reach, so there was a chance that the Hivemasters would have gotten involved as well.

"The unit was lost almost 26,511 Tacitrons ago. It was the experimental Scarab developed by HivemasterDgha-Da that was to be assimilated into your Squad. However...something went wrong with it's testing run, and it's signal stopped transmitting."

Ah, yes, Lu-Kreeza remembered now. The Hivemaster had been making such a big deal of it…he had been expecting a much better show than having 'Khaji-Da' be damaged almost immediately after release.

"But why is it showing up now after all this time?" he queried. The drone hesitated for a moment-just a moment, but it was there-and replied.

"It was not broadcasting our usual IFF signal…It was transmitting an emergency distress signal." That did not bode well. A Scarab Unit would only utilize it's emergency distress function if the unit itself had already experienced considerable damage. "However, it lasted only a moment. It ceased within seconds of the original transmission, but we were still able to pinpoint the location of the broadcast. Would you like to set a course?"

Lu-Kreeza thought about it for a moment. The war with Lady Styx was not going well. They had been in a stalemate for centuries, and that was with them at constant total war mobilization. In retrospect, it was lucky that the Green Lanterns had agreed to a peace treaty back in 0391. They were stretched thin as it was, and every Scarab unit was an important war asset. When it became clear that the 'Infiltrators' were the most effective soldiers they had at their disposal, most of them had been redeployed to the front lines. Only those that were vital to the continued harvesting and cocooning processes to feed The Reach were kept on Cocooning duty.

"Yes, do so immediately. It will serve The Reach well to recover one of it's lost brothers…At the very least, Dgha-Da will have his toy back." And with that, Lu-Kreeza's cocooning ship set a course for some underdeveloped backwater planet in Sector 2814.

* * *

**SCANNING…**

"Gah!" Exclaimed Billy, startled by the closeness of the sudden metallic and monotone voice. "What the heck was that?"

**TELECOMMUNICATION OF CURRENT RUNTIME PROCESS STATUS UPDATE.**

"What the…? Who is this?!" He demanded with urgency. His tusked helm swished from left to right, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere.

**SEARCHING DATABASE…ERROR! ERROR! ERROR…**

**DATA ARCHIVES CORRUPTED. ENTRIES 1-1,893,345 INACCESSIBLE. ENTRIES 1,893,346-54,641,871 SUCESSFULLY RESTORED. ENTRY 531 "UNIT DESIGNATION" : INACCESSIBLE.**

**SEARCHING TELECOMMUNICATION ARCHIVES…**

**ENTRY FOUND. HOST SUBCONSCIOUS REFERENCE TO UNIT "BLACK SCARAB"**

**TELECOMMUNICATION IDENTIFICATION REQUEST GRANTED : "BLACK SCARAB"**

Billy stopped. He stood there, staring blankly down towards the black scarab amulet that hung from his neck. He had used it just last night to…to correct a terrible mistake and…it was alive?

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

And apparently it talked like a computer.

**SYNTAX ERROR. UNIT "BLACK SCARAB" = ENTRY INACCESSIBLE**

**UNIT "BLACK SCARAB" = COMPUTER ≠ TRUE.**

"Yeesh…" Billy muttered. He had no idea how he could somehow…hear the text, but it was starting to give him a headache. He should've been more surprised that his new tool for righteousness was now talk-thinking to him, but honestly? _Much_ weirder things had happened in the last few days, so he was learning to just roll with things.

"Okay, Scarab it is, then." He acquiesced. He supposed that it was better to just call people what they wanted to be called, whether the person in question was a human or a beetle robot necklace.

"…So…" He continued, somewhat awkwardly? What did beetle robots like to talk about, anyways? He had few friends even when he was still just Billy Batson. Before his parents died in that car accident, he had like to think that he had a lot of friends from the elementary school he attended. After that, though, they started to gradually drift away. Even his supposedly best and most steadfast friends had wanted nothing to do with him after he became a homeless urchin thanks to his uncle-Dudley Batson.

His uncle was, even now, living up the high life. In _his_ house.

Billy's parents had wanted him to inherit their home, not his uncle. They had wanted for their wealth to be kept safe so he could support himself without them, not be stolen and squandered by his uncle. They had wanted Billy to live in relative comfort while he grieved for his parents, even to stay in school- but he had been forced to live off the streets for the better part of a year now.

Before, Billy could do nothing about any of these things. He had been a weak, scrawnier –than-average child, only about ten years old. He had stood no chance against his uncle in any kind of physical confrontation, and as Billy understood it, Dudley's crack team of lawyers had gotten the man out of more than one sticky situation before, usually scot free.

But things were different now. Where before, he could excuse Dudley's trespasses against him, it was now becoming difficult to resist the temptation to go over to _his_ house and throw _Dudley_ out on the streets.

He had a powerful weapon, and although he was hesitant to use it after the fiasco last night on the wharf where he found the Scarab, that same Beetle-like device allowed him much more leeway in the area of mistakes. He had power beyond any other person in the world, he reckoned. No one else could bring dead people back to life like he had.

And who would stop him? He was a 10-ton, 12-foot-tall, gun-toting armored giant-guy with golden skulls all over his pitch black armor. Who could possibly respond to something like that? He supposed that Superman guy on the news might, but only if Billy even registered on his radar. He would probably be too busy cleaning up an oil spill or stopping a tsunami in its tracks cold to deal with Billy. Much as he felt more powerful than he ever had before in his short life (Not that this said much, as he had been more or less powerless before), he still didn't think he could handle Superman in a fight.

_And besides_…reason came to the forefront of his mind, as well as the growing bud of responsibility that had come to be after the close call last night. _If I _did_ go beat up Uncle Dudley…would I be any different from the other bad guys?_

Of course not. A bad guy was someone who hurt civilians and abused the special powers they'd been given. Much as Dudley was a corrupt and undeserving life, he was human nonetheless. Billy, for all of his power, could _never_ take that from him. Besides…he always recalled watching Superman on TV, fighting the bad guys who always seemed to break out of the government's super prisons, and wondering. Why were the bad guys always trying to only help themselves instead of others? Maybe, if they used their powers for good, they wouldn't be hated so much and put in jail in the first place.

Billy decided that it would be both selfish and irresponsible to use his newfound power to exact his vengeance on Uncle Dudley, no matter how the man might have deserved it. Billy was better than that, despite his appearance. If he wanted people to take him seriously as a good guy while looking like he did, then he would have to hold himself to a higher standard of behavior than ordinary people. His weapons were tools for justice and righteousness, not personal gain. He had decided that when he made the choice to not try to use the Scarab to resurrect his parents.

**SCARAB REVITALIZATION FLUIDS AT 82% SUFFICIENT FOR RESSURECTION OF (TWO) ADULT HUMANS (3M10).**

"Gah!" Billy yelped again in surprise. He still wasn't used to the simultaneously booming and chattering voice in his head. "Jeez Louise, Scarab. You scared the heck out of me…Did you say 'stores'?

**AFFIRMATIVE. REVITALIZATION FLUIDS (82%) = 1% ZINC, 3% PROTEINS, 1% MISCELLANEOUS MINERALS, 2% ENZYMES, 2% VITAMINS, 1% SULFURIC ACID SOLUTION, 87% WATER, 2% VIRAL MATTER, 1 % DESIGNATION "PLAGUE" CELLS.**

"Okaaay…" Billy's inflection made it clear that he had no idea what any of that stuff was. He recognized the word "plague", but as far as he knew it was just an old word for "disease". Billy didn't know of any disease that brought the dead back to life good as new, but he'd bet a lot of people wouldn't mind getting it. And not just because of the time off from school, either!

"Wait." He stopped for a moment.

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

"You said I had…82% of the…uh, the 'Resurrection Fluid' left? Does that mean I'll run out eventually?"

**AFFIRMATIVE : STIPULATION/CLARIFICATION RECOMMENDED. PROCEED?**

"Uhh…" Billy thought for a second, and then nodded. "Affirmative."

**ACKNOWLEDGED : ENTRY 24,145,892 "REVITALIZATION FLUIDS" : **

**DESIGNATION : REVITALIZATION FLUID**

**PRIMARY FUNCTION : REPAIR/REIGNITION OF SAPIENT "LIFE" FUNCTION, RESTORATION OF CORPUS TO OPTIMAL CONDITION**

**(SECONDARY FUNCTION: USAGE OF VIRAL CELLS TO CONTROL SAPIENT NEURO-TISSUE POST-MORTEM WITH/WITHOUT PRIMARY FUNCTIONAL RESTORATION OF SAPIENT "LIFE" FUNCTION IN OPTIMAL/SUBOPTIMAL CONDITION BASED ON USER DISCRETION**

**SUPPLY: LIMITED**

**RE-SUPPLY PARAMETERS : MULTIPLE**

**-SYNTHESIZATION FROM DISEASE CELLS REMOVED FROM HOST (CURRENT RATE 0.8%/HOUR)**

**-DIRECT RETRIEVAL OF NECESSARY COMPONENTS (UNADVISABLE UNDER CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES)**

**-SYNTHESIZATION FROM ORGANIC MATTER (RECOMMENDED)**

"Sooo…" Billy guessed. "You need food to make more resurrection medicine stuff?"

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

"Got it. Well, it sounds like you've got enough for now…Let's see. That guy was dead for a couple of hours, and it drained your fluid supply down by 18%. Hmmm…I guess I'll see how much I actually need to use you over the next few days. I'll resupply when you drop under fifty percent or something."

**RESUPPLY PARAMETERS ACKNOWLEDGED.**

The Scarab's information was pretty useful. He hadn't known anything about the resurrection process until now, but it seemed like the Scarab used special medicines to bring people back to life. Maybe he should see what else the Scarab knew.

He had quite a few questions that needed answering. He'd been asking himself for almost three days now, even calling out to the ghost people who gave him his new powers in the first place. He'd just assumed they were good spirits or something…but this armor was scary. And the gun…well, he supposed that the gun had been his own fault. He had caught it when that gangster threw it at him in the alleyway. He couldn't blame the spirit guys for that

He would do well to find out all he could about his weapon, though. His mishandling of it last night had almost led to a serious misstep in his heroic deeds. A hero did not kill, and the only reason he had not broken that paramount rule was because of the intervention of the Scarab.

With a thought and a flick of a wrist the width of a man's waist, he summoned his 'pistol'. It would have been almost the same size as his entire body had he still been Billy Batson. The ridged flamethrower pump-trigger and the sickle magazine were distinctive figures of the blocky gun, as well as the three tubes extending from the front that led into a gun barrel and grilled flame-chamber.

**SCANNING… MATCH FOUND.**

**ENTRY 31,224,564 "COMBI-FLAMER"**

**DESIGNATION : COMBI-FLAMER**

**VARIANT : VULKAN-PATTERN**

**CLASSIFICATION : WARGEAR**

"War…?" Billy whispered in dawning realization.

**AMMUNITION :**

**-CURSED BOLT ROUNDS**

**-DECONSECRATED PROMETHIUM **

**DATABASE : THE VULKAN-PATTERN COMBI-FLAMER IS, AS IT'S NAME SUGGESTS, A COMBINATION OF A FLAMER AND A STANDARD GODWYN-PATTERN BOLTER RIFLE. BULLETS ARE FORGED FROM EXTREMELY DURABLE MATERIAL (DESIGNATION: ADAMANTIUM) AND ARE RIGGED TO DETONATE INSIDE THE TARGET AFTER PENETRATING THE ARMOR LAYER. ARMORED TARGETS NEUTRALIZED. UNARMORED TARGETS ANNIHILATED.**

Well, that would explain why the thug's arm had exploded when he tried to do a stupid trick shot. He had only meant to shoot the gun out of his hand, not blow his entire arm off. But now that he was reading the manual for the 'Combi-Flamer', it was hardly any wonder that he had caused more damage than intended. He would have to be more careful from now on, he decided. He made a mental note to review all of his capabilities with the Scarab.

**VULKAN-PATTERN FLAMER BUILT-IN TO CHASSIS ON CONSTRUCTION. REMOVAL/MODIFICATION PROMETHIUM – STABLE YET INCREDIBLY POTENT COMBUSTION ACCELERANT IN JELLIED LIQUID ADHESIVE UPON CONTACT WITH OXYGEN.**

Billy had never heard of 'Promethium' before, but then again he was only ten. For all he knew, this gun was a perfectly normal military grade weapon…which begged the question of _why_ he seemed to…change, everything he touched to become more…military-ish.

**ADDENDUM : HOST NONRATIONAL INFLUENCE GRANTS IMMEDIATE MODIFICATIONS TO WARGEAR**

**-PROMETHIUM DILUTED WITH (BLOOD OF KHORNE) (NONRATIONAL LIQUID ACCELERANT APPROXIMATELY 11 TIMES AS POTENT AS PROMETHIUM. PRODUCES FLAMES UP TO 18,000 DEGREES CELSIUS . RECOMMEND EXTREME CAUTIOUN.**

Billy was unfamiliar with the metric system. His education had yet to advance that far before he was pulled out of school by his nefarious uncle. Therefore, he had no idea of the implications of the words "18,000 degrees Celsius", merely replacing them in his mind with "Really really hot".

**ENTRY COMPLETE**

**SCANNING…**

Apparently it was done. Now that he knew more about the Combi-Flamer, he dismissed it to wherever it disappeared to when he un-summoned it. Red flames flashed in his gauntlet for a split-second, and the powerful weapon vanished in a puff of crimson smoke.

"Alright Scarab." He said enthusiastically. He could finally get some answers. "Next, tell me about this armor. And, like, my face…and why the heck am I twelve feet tall and…just tell me whatever you know, Scarab." He finished somewhat awkwardly. Billy was unused to issuing orders, being a ten-year-old orphan and street urchin. You would be hard-pressed to find someone more powerless in the whole city. He couldn't even afford to order food at restaurants, much less command actual obedience.

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

**SCANNING…**

Billy waited. And waited. The scan took several seconds that seemed like minutes to his impatient mind, and he awaited his much needed answers with baited breath. He felt a tingling sensation on his face beneath the helmet, and he guessed he was feeling whatever invisible way the Scarab scanned didn't know why the ghost people changed him into this…warrior, but maybe the Scarab could shed some light on the situation.

**MATCH FOUND**

**ENTRY 1,894,212 "SPACE MARINE PRIMARCH…"**

He wanted to interrupt. What the heck was a 'Space Marine Primarch'? A Marine was like one of those guys in the recruitment commercials…but space…?

"**HORUS LUPERCAL" – CIRCA 244M30**

**WARGEAR DETECTED – CORRUPTED TERMINATOR POWER ARMOR, LUPERCAL-PATTERN**

**WARNING!**

**EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION! **

**DATABASE : ARMOR IS A COMBINATION OF HIGHLY SOPHISTICATED TECHNOLOGY AND EXTREMELY DURABLE MATERIALS. OUTER LAYERS FORMED FROM CERAMITE, APPROXIMATELY 210 TIMES AS DURABLE AS TITANIUM ALLOY. ADDITIONALLY, CERAMITE CAPABLE OF INSULATION OF UP TO 3000 DEGREES CELSIUS. EFFECTIVELY IMPERVIOUS TO DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS BELOW SCALE ****α.**** INNER LAYERS FORMED FROM ADAMANTIUM, APPROXIMATELY FOUR TIMES AS DURABLE AS ADAMANTIUM. REBREATHER AND AIR-FILTER ATTACHMENT IN HELMET ALLOWS FOR SURVIVAL IN VACUUM AND TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS. FUSION ENGINE LOCATED IN UPPER BACK NECESSARY POWER FOR ARMOR TO FUNCTION. (5,000,000 KILOWATTS)**

**GENETIC ALTERATIONS WITHIN HOST ALLOW FOR MULTIPLE SUPERSTANDARD ABILITIES. STRENGTH, SPEED, ENDURANCE, AND SENSORY SUITE SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCED. METABOLISM ALTERED TO RETARD ORGANIC DECAY (EFFECTIVE INDEFINITELY). HYPODERMIC INNER LAYER OF VARIANT DESIGNATION "BLACK CARAPACE" ARMOR ALLOWS DIRECT INTERFACE WITH TERMINATOR SUIT SYSTEMS.**

**ADDENDUM : FUSION ENGINES**

**ENTRY COMPLETE.**

Huh…so the body and armor originally belonged to someone named…Horus Lupercal? Who was that supposed to be? It sounded like some kind of weird sci-fi name…like maybe a Jedi Knight from Star Wars or something. But the word "circa" was used to denote approximate dates…so that meant that "244M30" was a date in time.

This armor was extremely high-tech. Billy didn't understand what most of those statistics meant, but they sure _sounded_ impressive. He'd only heard most of those words before by watching sci-fi movies every weekend with his parents. His mom hadn't cared for most of them, but his father had been a fan of such things since he was kid. They went out every weekend to the movie theatre as a family…until the accident.

So the armor was high tech, and it corresponded with a date. Billy got a feeling that he knew where it was from…

"Scarab, how far in the future did this armor come from?" He asked nervously.

**APPROXIMATELY 38,000 YEARS. 38 MILLENIA. 380 CENTURIES. 3800 DECADES. 456,000 MONTHS. 1,976,000 WEEKS. 13,870,000 DAY-**

"All right! I get it, enough!" He exclaimed, stopping the Scarab from hammering in the numbers anymore.

**AFFIRMATIVE**

38,000 YEARS. His armor…this person he had become…everything was from 38,000 years in the future.

But…that was impossible! At least, he thought it was. He wasn't sure what to think after the last few days. When he was a giant, twelve foot tall space-marine armor-clad ten year old, his disbelief rang somewhat hollow.

So he was some kind of super-guy from the future with a suit of high tech armor. Okay. He could understand that, at least. Although…

He had to wonder exactly what kind of person this…'Horus Lupercal' was, with armor like this. It was all black and gold, and it was covered with spikes and skulls and stuff.

But maybe that was why the space-ghost/spirit people had given him the armor…so that he could redeem it with good deeds and righteous valor. Deciding that this was the case, Billy nodded to himself with newly affirmed confidence. That had to be it. Why else would the ghost people give him such power? He once again vowed to redeem the whatever actions this armor might have undertaken for the forces of evil, and to turn the armor of Horus Lupercal, whoever he was, into a symbol of justice and righteousness!

**ACCORDING TO PARTIALLY CORRUPTED DATA ENTRY TRENDS, ABSTRACT CONCEPTS IE "JUSTICE, HONOR" NOT TYPICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH DESIGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL"**

"Well, I'll make this armor associate with those words!" He snapped, somewhat petulantly. "I'll definitely be a superhero!"

**DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO" SCANNING…NO DATA FOUND. SUGGEST MANUAL CREATION OF NEW DATA ENTRY FOR DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO"**

"You mean they don't have superheroes in the future?" Billy asked, astonished and horrified.

**DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO" UNQUANTIFIABLE UNTIL ENTRY HAS BEEN CREATED. INSUFFICIENT DATA TO ANSWER QUERY.**

Hmmm. This would be a tough one. Just what _was_ a superhero? Sure, they rescued people and stopped bad guys, but fireman, doctors, and cops did that stuff too. Sure, superheroes had superpowers, but super_villains_ had those too.

What made a superhero?

Billy thought about the question over and over again in his head, until he found something that might be the answer.

"A superhero is someone who will always stand up to evil, no matter how big or powerful it is. They'll always save anyone who asks for their help, and never expect anything in return. Even their enemies. They recognize the value of all life, not just the people who agree with them. A Hero isn't a killer. A hero is someone who's brave enough _not_ to kill."

…

…

…

**PROCESSING…**

**ENTRY CREATED.**

**SCANNING FOR CONCEPT MATCHES IN DATABASE…**

**SCANNING…**

**SCANNING…**

**SCANNING…**

…

**NO RESULTS FOUND.**

…

"Oh. Bummer…" Billy muttered, suddenly feeling a lot less hopeful. He supposed it made sense. If there _were_ heroes that far in the future, what would the space ghosts need with someone like Billy? He was quiet for a little while after that, lost in his thoughts. But the silence was broken after just a minute or two, and the Scarab spoke to him again in that same flanging metallic voice.

…

**HOST IMPERATIVE IS TO RENDER SELF AS DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO"?**

Billy raised an eyebrow. "Uh, . I want to be a hero. I always have, I guess. I'd always been interested in comic books and superhero cartoons…but this is different. This is the real deal. I won't even be the first one, either…There's this guy in Metropolis who can fly and go really fast, and is stronger than 100 men! Some people are scared of him, and they say mean things in the newspapers and on TV…But I think what he's doing is really cool. And, and I want to be a hero to!"

** FOR OPPURTUNITIES TO PURSUE MISSION PARAMATER "SUPERHERO".**

…

**HACKING IN TO LOCAL POLICE AND EMERGENCY RESCUE NETWORKS…**

"Whoa!" Billy exclaimed. "Hold on! I never said to hack into the police computers! That's illegal.

**ENTRY FOR DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO"**

**SEARCHING TERM "LEGAL"**

**MATCHES = 0**

**DESIGNATION "LEGAL" = IRRELEVANT TO MISSION PARAMETERS**

…

**INFILTRATION OF LOCAL NETWORK COMPLETE. SECURITY OVERRIDES DISABLED. DATA RECORDS ERASED. DOWNLOADING ALL FILES TO DATABASE. ACCESSING LOCAL BROADCAST CHANNELS. ACCESSING LOCAL MEDIA LOCAL COMMUNICATION DEVICES.**

**SCANNING FOR ACTIVITY RELEVANT TO MISSION PARAMETERS DESIGNATION "SUPERHERO"**

**SCANNING…**

**SCANNING…**

**SCANNING…**

**MATCHES FOUND = 304**

**MATCH 1 :FAILED SUICIDE ATTEMPT ON FORTY-FIRST STREET**

**MATCH 2 : BURGLARY (UNARMED) IN PROGRESS ON FLEMING LANE**

**MATCH 3 :MUGGING IN PROGRESS AT BAKER STATION**

**MATCH 4 : TAX EVASION ON OGLETHORPE LANE**

**MATCH 5 : TRUANCY AT ANGIE'S BAR AND GRILL**

**MATCH 6 : UNDERAGE CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL AT ANGIE'S BAR AND GRILL**

Wow! Billy had some misgivings at first, but this…It was awesome! It was like he had his very own crime radio! Now, no criminal scum could Hide from the great Billy Batson!

Hmm. He'd have to think of a better name for himself later. "Anything serious going on nearby, Scarab?" It would probably take too long to get through all 304 crimes in progress.

**NARROWING SEARCH PARAMETERS…**

**ORGANIZING BY MAGNITUDE OF OFFENSE IN DESCENDING ORDER :**

**MATCH 162 : MULTIPLE RAPE/MULTIPLE HOMICIDE/HUMAN TRAFFICKING/FORCED PROSTITUTION/SUBSTANCE ABUSE IN PROGRESS AT WHARF 102.**

**MAT-**

"Wait, stop! Go back! Uh, Match 162!" Billy didn't know what half of those things were, but the words he did recognize were _badnews._Wharf 102…that must be at the docks somewhere. He was in his warehouse right now…he could still get there in time to stop the bad guys and save whoever was in trouble!

**MATCH 162 : MULTIPLE RAPE/MULTIPLE HOMICIDE/HUMAN TRAFFICKING/FORCED PROSTITUTION/SUBSTANCE ABUSE IN PROGRESS AT WHARF 102.**

**APPROXIMATELY 1.233 KM FROM CURRENT POSITION. FIFTEEN HOSTILE TARGETS, ARMED WITH UNDESIGNATED AUTOGUNS AND MULTIMOLECULAR KNIVES. **

"Uh, okay…" He had no idea what those things were, but he recognized guns and knives. He hoped his armor held up. But he was going there, no question. A hero didn't ignore this kind of thing happening _less than a mile away_…there was definitely still time.

He broke into a surprisingly swift run and barreled through the halls of the abandoned warehouse with thunderous and rapid footfalls. Floor tiles and wooden crates were crushed beneath his massive steps. He pressed Scarab for more information. He didn't want to rush into this blind like the last two times, at least not now that he had access to better information.

"Scarab, what else can you give me?" He asked between breaths.

**MULTIPLE TARGETING OPTIONS AVAILABLE. TWO TARGETS (UNHEALTHY ADULT MALES OF DESIGNATION "YUGOSLAVIAN" DESCENT, TRACES OF BARBITURATES AND STEROIDS DETECTED IN BLOODSTREAM … ADDENDUM : CONDITION TYPICAL OF TARGET FORCE) POSTED AT THE FRONT OF THE WHARF, 87% LIKELIHOOD OF ROLES AS "LOOK-OUTS" FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS. ARMED WITH MULTIMOLECULAR KNIVES AND VARIOUS STUBGUNS.**

**FOUR TARGETS, INFILTRATED BEHIND METAL SHIPPING CRATES, UNDETECTABLE FROM THE IN AMBUSH POSITION SHOULD FRONT GUARDS BE ELIMINATED. ARMED WITH KALASHNIKOV-PATTERN AUTOGUNS, VARIOUS STUBGUNS, AND INTERMITTENTLY ARMED WITH MULTIMOLECULAR KNIVES**

**REMAINING TARGETS CONCENTRATED AT ENTRANCE TO SHIPPING CRATE, SAVE 1. LAST REMAINING TARGET BEHIND SHIPPING CRATE, CURRENTLY PERPETRATING A RAPE IN-PROGRESS. SIX TARGETS CONCENTRATED AT ENTRANCE TO SHIPPING CRATE IMBIBING ALCOHOL AND INHALANT BARBITURATES. ARMED WITH KALASHNIKOV-PATTERN AUTOGUNS. DESIGNATION "RAPIST" ARMED WITH MULTIMOLECULAR KNIFE.**

**DESIGNATION "VICTIMS" **

**TWENTY ADOLESCENT TO ADULT HUMAN FEMALES, CONCENTRATED INSIDE SHIPPING CRATE. HEARTRATE AND MISCELLANEOUS BIOMETRIC DATA SUGGESTS ANXIETY AND DISCOMFORT. SIGNS OF PREVIOUS SEXUAL ASSUALT PRESENT.**

**(NOTE : THREE ADOLESCENT TO ADULT FEMALE HUMANS LYING IN PRONE POSITIONS INSIDE SHIPPING CRATE. NO DETECTED VITAL SIGNS – ASSUMED DEAD. EVIDENCE SUGGESTS STARVATION/DEHYDRATION/SUFFOCATION/BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA/SLEEP DEPRIVATION/DRUG OVERDOSE AS CONTRIBUTING FACTORS)**

**REMAINING ADULT FEMALE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING SEXUAL ASSUALT/RAPE BEHIND SHIPPING CRATE. TOTAL OF EIGHTEEN HUMAN FEMALES PRODUCING VITAL LIFE SIGNATURES. MISSION PARAMETERS PRESCRIBE HASTE.**

Billy was already halfway there.

* * *

Tiberiu was living the good life. The war in Yugoslavia had turned out to be very profitable for him and his family. His son was busy handling the business end of the deal up in San Francisco…much to Tiberiu's consternation.

He longed for the days when life had been simple. Their militia would roll in, kill the useless Romanian dogs infesting their homeland, and collar up the bitches for a tidy profit. Now, though…

It was all profit for Cristu nowadays. It was almost like he'd…forgotten his past. Like he was going soft. Everything was about money to him, now. All money and no respect. That…bothered Tiberiu.

Still, this was this and that would be then. For now, Tiberiu found himself smuggling in a few Albanian whores to cater to some of the dock workers after a hard day at the harbor. All they were waiting for was the garbage truck to get here so they could hide them inside and set them up deeper into the city, where it would be harder for them to escape.

Not that they would. His men had taken Vera's "rape them to break them" doctrine to heart on the long trip over. It was unavoidable that a bit of the product was too heavily damaged to salvage over the course of the trip, and Tiberiu had been forced to put a bullet or two in them just to stop the mewling. A man needed his sleep.

"Where's Andyunov?" He asked Sergei, one of his top enforcers. Sergei had been with him since before they started using the Romanian scum to turn a little profit on the side, and was one of the few people Tiberiu implicitly trusted. Hell, he was acting like more of a son to him than Cristu was right now! "I'm still upset about him setting us back two perfectly good sets of merchandise…"

"Out back." Sergei shrugged. "He was dragging one of the girls with him, but she stopped fighting it on the trip over here. She'll probably be fine."

Tiberiu thought for a moment, then shrugged himself and took another puff of his cigar. He supposed he'd let it slide _this_ time. They were doing well, and he didn't want to appear to be penny-pinching to his men anyways. There would be plenty more dogs like these back in the homeland to ship over, and it wasn't worth bitching Andyunov out again. That boy was a hell of a good shot, but he could be as dumb as a Russian sometimes!

"Have Illyushin and Sokolov checked in yet?" Speaking of Russians. The two half-wits had been put on lookout duty, since they couldn't muck that up too badly.

"Not yet…" Sergei admitted, but quickly placated Tiberiu's legendary temper and raised his hands in defense. "I'll go check on them and make sure they haven't fallen asleep or something…" Sergei waited for Tiberiu's curt nod of dismissal, and then got up to check on their "look-outs". Honestly, if they didn't need the muscle, Tiberiu would've shot those two morons by now…

"Pheh…" He puffed again on the cigar. For some reason, he felt a chill run up his spine. Must be because it's so early in the morning…

* * *

Unbeknownst to either of the parties rapidly heading off a collision course on waves of destiny, a visitor had come from far away and far yet to come. Two visitors to be precise.

A window to the warp, an event horizon opened itself with vile shrieking and an eerie ethereal light. The swirling vortex seemed to spasm for a moment, before it coughed out two slim figures that proceeded to fall two stories to the ground. The warp portal, opened so suddenly, vanished as quickly as it came.

Both figures came to a slow as they rapidly approached the pavement. The air became saturated with an electric tingle as the two psyker's made use of their considerable talents to retard their fall to a standstill. Just a foot or two off the ground, they let go, landing with a supernatural grace only members of the Eldar race could achieve.

Both had by now donned their Warmasks. Their bone white faceplates were encased in the black armor of Craftworld Ulthwe, made all the more terrifying with the piercing red eye slits.

Eldrad himself, long hailed as the greatest of the Farseers remaining to the Eldar race and certainly one of it's most senior members outside the cursed realm of Commoragh, stood tall and gracefully in one of his practiced battle-stances. He wore black robes intermittently armored with bone plate, and wielded his Power Spear in an ancient form long forgotten by all but the oldest Eldar.

Taldeer, his…successor, of a sort, wore the full battle armor of a Farseer gone off to war. She was right, he reflected, at least as far as the two of them may be considered an army. In truth…he was unsure if their combined power would be sufficient in this situation.

Ancient Terra. When the Mon-Keigh still traipsed about their homeworld, ignorant of the grand interstellar empires and the squabbling of the precursor races. No knowledge of the C'tan or the Old Ones reached this place. The Eldar…The Eldar were at the height of their power. Eldrad…though he longed for the day that his people would once again thrive through the galaxy and live without the constant fear of extinction, did not envy them. They were in for a very harsh slap of reality when She Who Thirsts came to _eat_ their _gods_.

"Why here?" Asked his apprentice. Taldeer was visibly discomfited by her new surroundings, although they were certainly preferable to the warp. She had long shown a higher tolerance for the comings and goings of the lesser races than many of her brethren, and was even known to have made common cause with some of the Mon-Keigh in the Kronos System. Such attitudes were a part of the reason he had chosen her to accompany him on this mission, aside from her raw power- It was key for them to keep from aggravating the indigenes. Not only would they quickly be overwhelmed in the case of a direct confrontation, their presence might attract…unwanted attention.

"The warp storm is what brought us here. No effort of mine could have guided us through, otherwise. The warp in this time is far more…concentrated, than in ours. In our generation, the warp stretches from one end of the galaxy to another, gathering in places of chaos and strife. Here…here, the warp gathers around…something."

"Something, Farseer?" Taldeer asked uncertainly. He could practically sense her raised eyebrow. It was not a common thing for Farseer Eldrad to be _uncertain_ of anything. That it came now was worrisome.

They had landed in a deserted crevice between the stunted buildings of the Mon'Keigh. Judging by the pungent odor emanating from within, it was a fishmonger. It was the early hours of the morning, where the night is darkest and the sun farthest from the sky. The Witching hour.

Eldrad grasped a ruby-red pendant hanging from his neck, encased in white bone and carved with the runes of their Craftworld. He muttered a few words that even her sensitive ears could not decipher, and a brief flash of light erupted from the jewel.

"There!" He exclaimed. He had walked from the alley, and now pointed across the harbor to a set of boxy, metal things that the Mon'Keigh had stacked upon one another. She assumed that their purpose was to transport military goods, given that the Imperial Guard were inclined to use such boxes to airdrop vehicles in to the field of battle.

"A weapons depot of some sort…?" She queried. It seemed…unusual, for a concentration of chaos to choose a Terran armory to haunt.

"No." Said Eldrad, his tone darker than usual. "'Tis a place normally reserved for trade and commerce. But _something else_ goes on there now. These Mon'Keigh…certainly live up to some of our brethren's expectations for their kind. And…It would appear they have attracted the attention of the one we seek. I can feel him…He is like a storm, compressed into the smallest volume it could muster. And such power! It is as if…As if the combined powers of ALL the chaos in this dimension…Is concentrated within an individual. I…I have never encountered a being such as this." He finished, sounding genuinely intrigued. It made sense, given his advanced age, as Taldeer would reluctantly agree. He had seen more Daemons and witchery in his time than many other farseers combined. His continued survival was a testament to his power.

"I do not mean to question you, Elder, but…are you certain we are capable of vanquishing such a foe on our own?" She asked, hoping for words of reassurance from the ancient Farseer. She was disappointed.

"No." He shook his head and his voice took to a sound of grim resolution. "Nothing about this…being is certain. In truth, I would have preferred the aid of Khaine in this matter." He admitted, and Taldeer stifled a growing sense of trepidation.

An Eldar Farseer did not fear the unknown. They walked their path knowing of the many terrible fates that would cross it. Both they and their comrades understood the great sacrifice made by every Farseer. The sacrifices that must be made to protect the Craftworld…Taldeer knew more than most. And she had faced down hordes of Orks, Tyranids, and Mon'Keigh touched by the Ruinous Powers, with valor in her heart without a thought to her own mortality. She may have died then, yes, and may die today. She was not afraid.

But to suggest that the intervention of an Avatar of the Bloody-Handed God of murder and war might not just be preferrable, but actually _necessary? _Their opponet… would have to be truly mighty.

"Take heart, Taldeer…" He called out to her, shaking her from her reverie. She was faintly embarassed by how long she had simply stood there, almost paralyzed by the implication of their quarry's power. If she ran in slashing and shooting like a Howling Banshee Exarch, their chances would be slim. But if she showed even a hint of fear, just a whiff, the Champion of The Dark Gods would be on her in a moment, and she wondered if even Eldrad could hope to fell such a foe unaided. "I would not have brought you into danger had I not a plan. Listen closely, and heed my words…"

He explained his gambit to her in great detail. She felt the beginning of a grin taking shape beneath her high-crowned helm. The more she listened, the greater her confidence rose. A cunning ruse such as thing would be just what was needed to overcome a doubtlessly arrogant and prideful caitiff such as they were about to face.

Their plans set and glamours in place, they sprinted as quickly as their legs would carry them to the apparent destination of Chaos' newest pawn. It was unclear what he wanted with the few beings huddled in between the crates, although Eldrad felt he had an inkling given the sensations of pain, fear, and despair from obvious the prisoners encircled within a group of cold and unfeeling hearts. Darkness was on their minds, and though their were no outward signs on his countenance, Eldrad was visibly sickened that even Mon'Keigh would sink so low. In his many years, he had seen many rituals conducted by the slaves and creatures of Slaanesh. It spoke well of their fortune that they had arrived in time to head off whatever fate awaited the terrified Mon'Keigh, insignificant as they were in the grand scheme of things. No one deserved the fate Eldrad suspected awaited them within the clutches of the rapidly approaching Champion of Chaos.

* * *

Billy was closing in on the bad guys. Really, that was the only way to describe them at this point. The Scarab had gone over their crimes in great detail on the way over here, and Billy's eyes widened into a haunted look despite himself. It was…It was so…so terrible. That people could actually do _that_ to other people.

Even worse was that everyone else was _letting_ it happen. The police were nowhere to be seen. Superman was probably off intercepting a meteor shower or, or digging up a trench to stop a tsunami dead in its tracks. He either didn't know or didn't care about what was happening here this very morning, and had been going on four years according to Scarab. Billy felt his opinion of the man shrink, if only by a tiny fraction.

Intellectually, and with his newly minted analytical mind, he realized that the weight of all the world's problems could hardly be placed on the shoulders of one man, even if said man _could_ theoretically bear the weight. This wasn't just any one group or person's problem. The fact that it was happening _here_ in _America_ made it the police's problem, but according to Scarab these _scumbags_ had been operating out of some place in Europe for years without ever even being stopped by the Port Authority. They'd never been arrested, and according to Scarab's digging into their backgrounds as he somehow managed to scan their visual and biometric data via an inaudible signal from their cell phones and stuff, Scarab managed to identify them. Billy would have to make sure to thank Scarab when he cooled off from how angry he was; His robot buddy was proving to be a big help in his superhero-ing.

**DESIGNATION "TIBERIU BULAT" (SUPPORTED BY SELF-FORMED MILITIA GROUP)**

**YUGOSLAVIAN NATIONALIST AND CRIMINAL, BULAT CURRENTLY RUNS A HUMAN-TRAFFICKING RING THAT UTLIZES DESIGNATION "FAWCETT CITY" TO TRANSPORT PERSONS WITHOUT DETECTION VIA GRAFT PAYMENTS MADE TO THE DESIGNATION "FAWCETT CITY PORT AUTHORITY". **

Billy's expression darkened. The police…they were supposed to help people, and protect them from _scum_ like Bulat. But here they were, big, fat, liars! They took money to look the other way, and still dared to call themselves the city's protectors. Well, that was a title Billy planned to _usurp_.

**CORRESPONDANCE BETWEEN DESIGNATION "TIBERIU BULAT" AND DESIGNATION "COMMISSIONER SAMUEL MCKINLEY" APPROPRIATED FROM LOCAL TELECOMMUNICATION RECORDS. ALL EVIDENCE OF APPROPRIATION DELETED. MISSION PARAMETERS RECOMMEND USE OF RECORDINGS TO COERCE DESIGNATION "TIBERIU BULAT" (201 METERS, 26 DEGREES WEST) INTO CONFESSION. **

Billy had his Combi-Flamer in hand, and fully intended to use it if the bad guys decided to resist arrest. He wouldn't kill anyone, certainly. Good guys didn't do that, no matter how much the bad guys might deserve it. Everything and everyone had always told him so. He himself believed it, too.

But thankfully, Scarab still had 82% of his Revitalization Fluid available. He would be careful only to cause nonlethal wounds and to only use suppression fire…but Scarab would take care of any…mishaps, on his part. Tiberiu in particular might cause his finger to slip on the trigger prematurely. Perhaps being (temporarily) dead or grievously injured might teach them a lesson about respecting women and not hurting children.

Normally, Billy wouldn't go quite so far as to actively plan to use _death_ of all things as a rather extreme time-out, but he was in a _rage_.

**SELECTING TARGETING PARAMETERS. SET TO KILL.**

_Affirmative…_ Billy thought. He had enough Revitalization Fluid to cover for any…oversight, on his part. If he ran out, he could always just get some food or something and recharge it. If he was thinking clearly, he would have been much more hesitant to use deadly force against other humans, even if the targets in question kind of stretched the definition of human being. But after having all of their crimes and sins so coldly spelled out before him by Scarab, he found it rather difficult to see any redeeming qualities or reasons to let them live. The reason-the only reason- he was going to use Scarab to revive them if they died in the ensuing firefight was his resolution to be a hero. Heroes didn't kill…at least, not _permanently._

He closed in on the wharf within moments. Grated metal shipping crates of all colors and sizes blocked most of the bad guys from view, but the two Russian lookouts heard his thundering steps as he barreled towards them, crushing heavy craters into the soft pavement beneath his feet.

"Hey, who the hell is that?!" Asked one, getting up from his leaning position against a crate and reaching for his concealed pistol. He was wearing plain khaki slacks and a tight-fitting green t-shirt over his bulky form.

**DESIGNATION "GREGORI ILLYUSHIN" **

**WARGEAR : (1) "MAKAROV"-PATTERN STUBGUN**

**DESIGNATION "IVAN SOKOLOV"**

**WARGEAR :(1) "TOKOREV"-PATTERN STUBGUN, (1) MULTIMOLECULAR UTILITY KNIFE**

Billy didn't know what a "Stubgun" was, but he was guessing it was just a pistol, given how the two angry-looking Russian bad guys whipped out a couple of guns. Scarab seemed to have weird names for some things…but he guessed that was what happened when you were from the future.

"Drop your weapons." Billy ordered, using his deepest voice. Unlike when he was a kid, where such an action would have provoked laughter, the two goons looked at each other and back to him. They actually flinched when he spoke.

"F-fuck you, _freak_! Go the hell back to whatever _circus act_ you escaped from!" Said the big one, wearing the green t-shirt. The skinny one in the flannel jacket looked to have a lot less bravado.

"I said, _drop your weapons_!" He raised his voice, and it boomed out of the speakers on his helmet. Some of the nearby trash and stuff shook at the sound, and it echoed ominously off the metal crates. One of the thugs actually did lose his grip on the gun, and didn't seem too interested in picking it up again. He raised his hands to the air when he caught a glimpse of Billy's Combi-Flamer being leveled at him.

"D-don't shoot!" The skinny one exclaimed. The other Russian gangster was not quite so intelligent.

"Ivan, you-you _old woman!_ Fine! I'll kill this carnival freak myself!" He took aim at Billy, looking down the sights and carefully gripping his pistol with both hands. If Billy didn't know better, he'd say the guy was a soldier.

**AFFIRMATIVE. DESIGNATION "GREGORI ILLYUSHIN" SERVED IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY FOR THREE YEARS BETWEEN 006M3 AND 009M3. DESIGNATION "IVAN SOKOLOV" – NO PRIOR MILITARY EXPERIENCE. EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT SOKOLOV WAS A DRUG DEALER AS AN ADOLESCENT AND GRADUATED TO ENFORCER WORK WHEN HE REACHED PHYSICAL MATURITY.**

Illyushin stepped back as the last round of his 13-bullet clip ricocheted off of Billy's helmet. In the time it took to listen to Scarab's fun facts about the guy, he'd emptied his gun right between Billy's eyes. Fortunately, his armor seemed to be more or less completely bulletproof, and Illyushin looked a lot less confident and a lot more terrified.

"My turn." Billy said dangerously. These men were bad guys, like, _really bad_. He had promised himself to only use his Combi-Flamer for good…but honestly, he had a hard time believing the ghost-people would have condoned _anything_ these guys were doing. Guns were made by good guys to _stop_ bad guys, right? Well, he supposed shooting at them would be more than proper, given what they were doing to those poor women… the very thought of these wretched _animals_ hurting any other woman or girls-there were _girls only a little older than him_ back there, too-sickened him to the core. He would teach these guys a lesson about proper behavior they'd never forget!

Steeling himself, he squeezed the trigger on his Combi-Flamer. His strong, steady arm compensated for his lack of experience, and the recoil didn't even make him flinch. But the deafening boom clearly shocked Sokolov as he almost doubled over. Illyushin hit the pavement as the bolts sailed wide above his head.

Billy decided that he wouldn't _actually_ shoot them, no matter how badly they deserved. He was supposed to be a hero, and just like he'd finished telling Scarab, heroes don't kill. It was easy to be hero when you wanted to be, but the true test came when your whole body was telling you to kill the men in front of you with your awesome power and you _ignored it. _Billy was discovering these things that very moment, as he continued to fire in a wide arc to keep the goons suppressed.

The booming gunfire attracted the attention of the other thugs as well, some of whom were situated on top of the crates. Illyushin and Sokolov took cover behind another set, and Billy smirked as his need to punish these evildoers came to a compromise with his heroic non-lethal mandate.

His gun clicked empty for as he pulled the trigger once again. He'd been firing into the air for a few seconds, which was surprisingly fun, and it appeared that his magazine was now spent.

_Darn_, he thought, _I never learned how to reload this…does it even come with extra ammo?_

His parents had been rather liberal when it came to their views on video games when he was still being raised by them, so he had a basic knowledge of how guns worked. They carried a certain amount of ammunition, and after you fired it all you had to reload. But…the ammo was always stored off screen somewhere. In all the FPS games, your person would just grab it from somewhere and jam it into the empty slot in the gun.

Just as these thoughts crossed his mind, though, the issue solved itself. As he thought about being out of ammo, more appeared. In a flash of red fire and a crimson puff of smoke, a fresh sickle magazine materialized in his free hand.

_That's…pretty neat. Hey, it appeared the same way the Combi-Flamer does when I think about it! So…that must mean that my "Gun Powers" are thought-controlled._

**INSERT SICKLE MAGAZINE INTO EMPTY SLOT- MAGNETIC SEALS WILL ACTIVATE TO LOCK IT IN PLACE UNTIL SPENT**

Scarab elaborated for him.

_Okay...sounds simple enough _He thought.

Shrugging, he jammed the cartridge into the slot, and began to take aim.

Sokolov, Illyushin, and several of the other human traffickers had been pelting him with surprisingly accurate shots from their pistols and assault rifles. He didn't even feel them at all, and only the bright lights and loud noises of the shots actually alerted him that he was being shot at. The pathetic, tiny clinking of bullets bouncing off of his armor almost made him want to laugh- whatever these guys were packing, it was clear that they were woefully outgunned. Billy didn't know what they were called, but the Russian bad guys in that Indiana Jones movie and World War 2 movies were always using them.

**SCANNING…ACCESSING LOCAL RECORD FILES…**

**MATCH FOUND.**

**ENTRY CREATED.**

**DESIGNATION "KALASHNIKOV-PATTERN AUTOGUN"**

**DATA : **

**TYPICAL WARGEAR OF SOVIET UNION WARRIORS DURING THE 949M2 – 991M2. AT PRESENT, MORE COMMONLY UTILIZED BY SLAVIC AND EASTERN EUROPEAN CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS.**

**AMMUNITION : 7.62×39mm FULL METAL JACKET, STEEL CORE BULLETS (30 PER MAGAZINE)**

**PENETRATING POWER : NEGLIGIBLE (INCAPABLE OF PIERCING MUNITORIUM-STANDARD FLAK ARMOR )**

**THREAT ASSESSMENT : NONEXISTANT**

So apparently they were called "Kalashnikov's" or whatever those were. Scarab used a bunch of odd terminology, and Billy only understood about half of it. Still, he certainly got the last part.

"Ha ha ha, not so tough when your guns don't do anything, are you?! I bet your too chicken to come out and fight be yourselves! Bwak, bwak-bak" He taunted. Despite this insulting chicken noises, none of the bad guys took the bait. Indeed, his enhanced vision spotted them from their perches on top of the shipping crates, some of them lying prone and carefully aiming down the sights.

His childish taunting seemed to creep them out more than anything else, so he decided it was time to try out his idea.

His enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of them shouting at each other in Russian and the distinctive noise of guns being cocked and bullets being loaded into rifles.

Shooting from the hip, as he was unfamiliar with proper marksmanship and didn't want to look stupid if he tried to imitate the bad guys, Billy opened fire on the crates themselves. With thunderous, explosive booming, his Bolts easily penetrated the thin metal of the crates and the shells exploded inside. Shrapnel tore up the thin metal containers from the inside out, and the support structure of the four corners collapsed after just about four or five three-round bursts.

The bad guys had no idea what hit them. With a great crash and with much hollering, they fell to the ground as their support failed beneath their feet. It was a good two stories up, so they were quite incapacitated when they hit the hard, unforgiving concrete wharf beneath them. Sokolov and Illyushin were both hit over their heads by the falling metal crates, and didn't get back up as the clattering metal knocked them down.

With the barrier destroyed, Billy took quick steps over to the broken crates and shattered resistance of the human trafficking gangsters. He casually picked up one of them, who had still been conscious and crawling towards a fallen Kalashnikov. With contemptuous ease, he threw the sorry excuse for a decent human being at least 30 feet in the air. Hopefully he'd break some bones or something. It wouldn't be right for scumbags like these to get away with what they've been doing, even if he couldn't kill them.

* * *

Tiberiu was at a loss for words. One minute, he was watching Sergei go see what the hell was happening up front. They'd heard shouting…and gunshots. Since there were no sirens or megaphone shouting, it must've been a rival gang rather than the police.

Rollo and his boys were on top of a few crates, and he could see them firing on…_something_, down between some crates. He couldn't see it from here…but surely they must have got him dead by now, right? Unless their rivals had some kind of _tank_ or some such shit, which would certainly be problematic.

"What the fuck…" He asked under his breath. His query was cut short as something came flying through the air over the crate. It landed on his chest, knocking him to the ground.

"Aghnn…" His tired old bones were starting to feel their age as he heard cracking noises coming from his chest area. His ribs felt like they were on fire…but what worried him was that he could feel one lung expand but not the other. "…Fuck…Sergei…?"

He was shocked. It was Sergei, all right. He recognized the smell of booze and cigarettes…He'd only had a hard time recognizing the broken form that had been _thrown on top of him from the fucking sky_ because of how beaten up he was. It looked like he had a nasty gash on his head, and a piece of shrapnel had turned lodged into the side of his forearm. He was still breathing, but his second in command would be of little use during the coming firefight. "Shit…Fuck…" He breathed out, struggling to get out from under Sergei. But his ex-subordinate weighed over two-hundred pounds, and Tiberiu was already injured and in an awkward position, never mind old. Still, he thrashed and struggled. He refused to die here of all places, shot up by some nobody, no-name thug sent from one of their competitors. He soon developed even more difficulties.

His ears began to bleed slightly as the air was filled with ear-splitting, deafening banging sounds. They were like gunshots, but _so much louder! _Tiberiu was running out of energy fast, and the pain from his ears was distracting him. His arms lost what little progress they had made to lifting the weight from off of him as they collapsed.

The shooting stopped a few moments later. All of it. There was silence, broken only by the sound of waves crashing against the concrete foundation of the wharves. Tiberiu realized he had broken out in a cold sweat already, and silently cursed his weakness. He was a veteran of the Yugoslavian war! He was a warrior, a fighter! He _refused_ to die in such an undignified manner…

The sound of footsteps entered his hearing. They drew closer and closer, thundering a steady beat on the concrete and crushing what was left of the ruined wharf into fragments. His men…they must have all died…His entire crew, dead in just over a minute…

The awesome figure of his assailant came into view as Sergei was effortlessly lifted from his broken form with a casual flick of a finger. The large, well-built man _flew_ into the side of a nearby green shipping crate as if the single finger had been a high-powered explosive. A big dent was beaten into the thin metal of the crate under such tremendous force.

For the first time in many years, Tiberiu Bulat knew what horror was. That realization that everything you knew, everything you had some kind of rational explanation for had gone out the window. It was exactly the feeling Tiberiu now experienced as a giant clad in blood-splattered black and gold armor, the size of an elephant and the strength of ten men, wielding a huge rifle the size of Tiberiu's torso.

Ludicrously, Tiberiue almost begged for his life. But he stopped himself and merely let his mouth hang open. Whoever this…Devil is, had killed all of his men without a word. There was no question as to Tiberiu's fate, and something told him that nothing he had to offer would sate this…thing's hatred. He could feel it! It reverberated from the giant like a musk, as if the _glowing red eyes_ and _skull embroidery_ had been too subtle. They _burned_…they _hurt_ to look at! His _eyes_ actually began to water. That was the _only_ explanation for the cold tears that now trickled down his face. As if he was staring into the fiery pits of Hell itself... He was beginning to think that Satan himself had sent this demon to drag him into the ninth circle of hell to burn, forever.

His suspicions proved correct when Tiberiu felt the barrel of a gun pressed up against his skull. Preparing for the end, Tiberiu remembered his roots. He remembered going to church as a boy in Sarajevo, of reading the bible every Sunday with his father. He had…forgotten, his religious upbringing for most of his life. During the war…or even before then. Certainly now that he was shipping girls he kidnapped from the Old Country into America to sell their bodies, the words of the all-forgiving and merciless god Minister Ub had often spoken of rang hollow.

Of course, this experience was rekindling the memory those long forgotten sermons and lessons from Sunday School. After all, if Satan existed, God had to be real too. Right?

_Either way… _He mused, staring down the barrel of Lucifer's pistol. _I'm fucked six ways from Sunday, and it looks like dying isn't gonna be the end of my troubles…_

He almost laughed. From an objective point of view…Tiberiu realized that he had done things that there would be no forgiveness for. He closed his eyes. Despite his tough, sound-and-thundering exterior, he felt every bit the frightened, weak, old man that he was at this moment.

"You know…" The giant said, in tone that brooked no interruption. He sounded half-Lucifer himself, with that helmet echoing his already booming voice. "You deserve this, right?" He asked, seriously.

Tiberiu opened his eyes, wanting to come up with some kind of angry retort containing the words "Fuck" and "Cocksucker", but…he simply couldn't find the strength. He was a broken man now, he saw. He was terrified and weak, in a way he had never been for virtually his entire adult life. But he was a mere shadow of the demon who retook his Homeland from the Romanian _pigs_. All it took was one of his men _fucking falling on him _for his whole body to fail. Perhaps…perhaps this was a sign. He could think of no other explanation for a homicidal demon clad in hellish armor and wielding a monstrous gun that sounded like it shot exploding thunderbolts. It would seem that God had his number today, and he was to answer for a life of…of hardship, yes, but also cruelty. The cruelty of war, he called it. But that held nothing on him, now. He realized that excuses would do him no good, now. It was time to own up. There was nowhere else to go but forward or-as he suspected- _down._

"Yes." He said simply, still staring into those blazing red eyes…No frown or grimace happened upon his face. His features were totally relaxed. But his eyes showed fear. They bent and curved like the treacherous snakes they were and let his terror be known, as if the dampness in his pants were not already evidence enough.

"Tiberiu Bulat. This is the last time you will hurt anyone, ever – again. Women, children, men. _Anyone_. I know who you are. I know where you operate. I know who all of your friends are…I know where your family lives...If I ever see you again…you'll wish I'd just killed you…" He said, still in an angry snarl. His demonic voice projected utter loathing into the terrified old criminal's very soul. Every word was like a nail being driven behind the back of his eyes, and he felt a migraine begin to take him. He was the focal point of this thing's rage, his anger, his hate…And these strong feelings held greater power than usual when coming from a being such as this one.

As the hammering continued on his mind, Darkness overtook Tiberiu's eyes as a hard _smack_ took him in the temple. The giant's pinky finger collided with his head with meager force compared to what he was truly capable of, but the light was nevertheless stolen from his eyes as unconsciousness took him.

* * *

"Strange." Observed Eldrad, from his position crouched behind one of the few remaining crates. Taldeer was just behind him. They had both veiled themselves in as many glamours as they could conjure with so little preparation. Eldrad merely prayed, for both his own sake and that of his student's, that they would be enough to fool this vile fiend. He had been hoping to observe their foe's powers and battle prowess to gain insight on how to best approach their ambush of the Champion of Dark Gods, but that plan had been for nought.

The Champion's methods were almost childishly simple, and from the looks of it he seemed to be _playing_ with the hardened criminals. Monsters, murders, and rapists to a man…and the abomination before them had _toyed_ with them, thrashing and bashing them about like a sadistic child might throw around his playthings until they broke.

"I concur. It seems consistent with the nature of _his kind_ to commit wanton murder and destruction. This one's actions seem somewhat… subdued." She commented. Her misty eyes were contemplating the scene before her beneath her Warmask. She reached out to the Warp and the depths of her psyker mind for the answers she sought, but was met only with silence. The warp was…calm, here. It made sense, she supposed. She Who Thirsts had yet to take form, and her people had yet to begin their descent from grace.

"Yes, and that raises another question…What does he plan to do with his new captives? He made a point of neutralizing the miscreants without actually killing them. Throughout all of my years, the only reason that any worshipper of Chaos has ever exercised such restraint was for the purpose of ritual sacrifice at a later point."

Taldeer nodded in agreement. "Yes, that would seem to be the case. It would also explain why he chose this particular target…" The female Eldar practically growled, and though Eldrad could not see it, he suspected her eyes narrowed into slits and her teeth gnashed.

He could hardly blame her. Though their hearts and those of many of their peoples had been hardened over the course of centuries of constant bloodshed and war, they still prided themselves on their maintenance of a more civilized and righteous culture than any of their junior races, at least aboard the Craftworld. _Lesser_ races, as Taldeer might have once called them.

A ghost of an ironic smile haunted Eldrads features beneath his own Ghosthelm. Taldeer had…changed, for lack of a better word. But it may have been better to say that she had _grown_.

When she returned from Lorn V, something had changed within her. She had ceased with her insistence that the younger races of the galaxy were inferior…she had new respect for their successors. Eldrad had long seen the potential in the Mon'Keigh to fill the void the Eldar had left in their ancient struggle against their mortal enemies, the C'tan, and their own metallic slaves. It was heartening to see one of his favorite students coming around to his way of thinking.

She had a new respect for the Mon'Keigh, and had begun to see them as more than mere potential threats. Eldrad had an inkling of what had happened there on Lorn V, but he said nothing on the matter. Taldeer, although she remained in contact with him, was no longer his student. She was a powerful Farseer in her own right, well on her way down the path of the Seer. It was her affair, and hers alone.

Still, her newfound sensibilities came with their share of disadvantages. In this matter, Eldrad spoke from experience; While war, murder, and destruction were all too common in their own time, this place was relatively peaceful. There was no war or destruction here-so far, at this particular place, this shiphaven- save that which emanated from the colossal Lord of Chaos before them.

Eldrad _recognized_ that armor… he had his doubts, as that person _should _have been _ten-thousand years dead_, high in orbit above the cradle of the Mon'Keigh civilization…but it would not be the first time the Dark Gods had seen fit to return to a more useful tool should their current slaves prove lacking.

But Taldeer was more focused on the Mon'Keign females, trapped within the crate and full of fear, despair, and misery. Eldrad himself found it abhorrent and abominable, himself, but there was little they could do for them at this juncture. Unhappy as he was to admit it, he was…unsure of their chances. Their stalking of this most dangerous and unpredictable prey had been fruitless- the Champion had not tipped his hand, and used only the bare minimum of force required to accomplish his goals. That in itself spoke volume of their target; He was restrained, disciplined, and showed a level of foresight that was almost frightening to see in a servant of the Ruinous Powers. It reinforced his theory as to the identity of the man-or monster, perhaps both- within that armor.

His farsight was clouded. The warp here was faint, and small. His powers, considerable as they might be, were accustomed to far closer access to the Empyrean. In their own time, the barrier between the physical reality and the Warp was as thin as gossamer…Here, it was a stone bulwark that he had to struggle and wrangle with just to obtain the miniscule amount of power necessary to conjure up their glamours. It would be impossible to use them in battle without significant and time-consuming rituals of preparation…As it was, any confrontation between them and the Champion would be a purely physical one. One look at the gargantuan, armored form of their quarry would be enough to predict how _that_ fight would pan out, even without farsight. Wraithbone was strong, but not strong enough. He had learned that painful lesson with many lost comrades and dear friends, crushed under the merciless bootheels of the Mon'Keigh fallen to the seductions of the Dark Gods.

Taldeer, unfortunately, was frustrated by this. Not just frustrated, she was _livid_. Such barbarity as the women and children trapped within their cold, steel prison had endured was being broadcast through the warp-thin though it was. The intensity and raw pain was projected with such force that any psyker of sufficient power and attunement to the ways of the warp-such as two Eldar Farseers-might pick it up for miles on end.

Eldar felt emotions much more intensely than Mon'Keigh. So when Taldeer's considerable training, willpower, and intellectual restraint was finally overwhelmed by the flood of pain and torturous misery, Eldrad was unsurprised. He himself was gritting his teeth in frustration at his own inability to act and defuse such a travesty, and only his years of hardening experience with the horrors the junior races-and sometimes their own race, he recalled with a grimace-subjected each other to. All of those raw and volatile emotions were like a burning flame within the warp that lit Taldeer's noble spirit alight. Eldrad would have considered such righteous indignation at the treatment of innocents laudable at any other moment-especially given that they were of one of the supposedly "lesser" races-But now was _not_ the time.

The fate of the future was resting on their shoulders, of both their own people and the Mon'Keigh. They could not allow something like this, horrible though it may be, to cloud their judgement. They must wait for the perfect moment to strike-the perfect opportunity. For if they failed…Only Darkness awaited their future. They would join Asuryan's side just in time to be devoured by the advent of She Who Thirsts…and her greatest servant would await her to step upon the growing seed of the Imperium long before it ever bore fruit. Mankind would never rise…and both the C'tan and the Ruinous Powers would have their way of the Universe until the end of time itself.

But, alas, his restraining hand never reached Taldeer's wrist. Like a bolt of righteous lightning, she bounded from her place and yelled a beautiful cry promising death and suffering to her newest foe. Eldrad cringed, but crushed the trepidation within himself. A path had been chosen, and there was no turning back. The only way was forward.

So with the famed Staff of Ulthamar and his trusty Witcblade in hand, the most powerful Farseer who ever lived dashed out from behind his impromptu cover to join the fray, sending a prayer to the still-living Asuryan to guide his strikes true. For this was the battle that would decide the fate of the universe…forever.


	4. Chapter 4 : War of the Wharf

**A/N : REVIEWS**

**sanddrake111 : More or less...But it's not exactly cloning. Cloning suggests science and technology, but that isn't the case here. The Dark Gods used powerful sorcery to turn Billy into Horus Lupercal in everything save memory and personality. It is THE Horus, right down to the muscle memory, but taken from the height of his power. I suppose that it was as if they plucked the Horus that MIGHT have been, somewhere 30,000 years in the future, and manipulated the Materium to fit their scheme to have Horus in that place and time, but with the soul of Billy Batson. Also, he has hair now.**

**MatchingTies : Billy won't be an out and out villain, as that would be WAY too OOC...at least, not before some significant developments. The warp can do strange things to someones mind, especially that of a child. Some of the more 'mundane' aspects of the 41st Millenium aren't exactly child friendly either. You can imagine just how well his "Heroes don't kill" policy would go over there. **

**Hammerchuckery : TL;DR? Too long, didn't read? That's pretty insulting for a writer to hear. Don't complain about something you didn't finish reading. As for Scarab, it was kind of necessary. First of all, no one else was going to tell him he was using Horus' body, except Eldrad. He isn't exactly on speaking terms with Billy at this point, and isn't going to stop to explain to Billy (Who he thinks IS Horus) who he is and what their problem with him is. Secondly, Scarab is a character, not a McGuffin. He's talking like a computer right now because many of his files were corrupted by Chaos, including most of his personality. Scarab will be developed a lot more during the Reach story arc. In addition to that, Billy would have no idea what the heck he was dealing with about anything he encounters from the 41st Millenium without Scarab, which would lead to some very boring and one sided fight scenes along with a lot of awkward and vaguely descriptive dialogue. It's a lot easier to have Billy know what a combi-flamer is and refer to it as such than to have him keep calling it "Gun-flamethrower-thingy". Besides, _most of_ Chapter 3 consisted of Billy interacting with Scarab and tracking down criminals that he had no way of knowing about without Scarab's help...It would've been a pretty boring chapter if he was just talking to himself the whole time and wandering the streets of Fawcett city looking for crimes in progress. Very inefficient and would make little sense. Scarab provides exposition and is useful for enlightening readers not familiar with 40k fluff with basic information. Anyways...DL;DR. Don't like, don't read. I don't agree with your assessment of Scarab, and won't be revising Chapter 3 on that basis.**

**Watcher of the Apocalypse : I plan for this story to be fairly lengthy, and it's paced as such. I'm still learning to make convincing dialogue, but I'm glad you think it's working. As for Scarab, he'll be receiving a lot more attention during the planned 'Reach Arc', when his creators come back looking for him and manage to upset the delicate political balance in the galaxy.**

**Thanks to all of the reviewers and followers of this story for their support. I hope you enjoy this chapter and feel free to contribute any constructive criticism or feedback as you like.**

* * *

"Huh? What was that, Scarab?"

**REPETITION : INCOMING HOSTILE TARGET. RECOMMEND EVASIVE MANEUVERS.**

The first thing he heard was the horrible wail that seemed to pierce the very fabric of the sound barrier. His enhanced hearing picked up every decibel of the harsh shriek, and he was momentarily paralyzed by the sheer surprise of such a sudden and reverberating sound.

It second thing he noticed was the fact that something had actually knocked him flat to the ground.

It came like a lightning bolt- fast and deadly. He felt like someone had just hit him on the back with a chair or something – a shock of pain shot up his back and he yelled out more in surprise than in legitimate agony. It wasn't that bad, more like getting a hit with a basketball suddenly on the back – not too painful, but unexpected enough that you weren't prepared to control your response.

He was on his feet a split second later, his powerful limbs lifting his prodigious weight with some effort. Whatever had just hit him had hurt, which meant that they apparently hit harder than assault rifle bullets. He needed to get some distance between them so he could see what he was dealing with…but whatever it was, it was _fast!_

"Prepare to meet your doom at my hands, Mon'Keigh!" A powerful and mechanically filtered voice shouted at him. It was feminine and sharp, but spoken with a melodious grace he might have expected from a professional singer on a good day.

"Who the heck are you?" He growled out, annoyed at being hit and somehow managing to rub his back where this weird lady had struck him.

Whoever she was, she certainly wasn't one of those gangsters…or even _normal. _She was wearing a long black robe that clung tightly to her slender figure. She was further encased in form-fitting battle armor of some sort, white as bone and smooth like polished ivory. Red jewels and eldritch runes decorated her armor, with symbols and patterns Billy had never seen before on any earthly garment. Most striking of all was the intimidating, high-crowned mask that reminded him of an elongated skull. It had blazing red eye visors much like his own, but it was missing any visible rebreathing device.

In one hand she wielded a massive-looking spear-like weapon. It had the same triangle-shaped rune on the blade of mounted on top of the staff. It was emitting a low, constant hum and the air itself seemed to distort around it. In the other hand, she wielding a smooth, curvy pistol of some sort. It had more of those red, glowing jewels embedded into it. It was more elongated and streamlined than any pistol he'd ever seen, except maybe in sci-fi movies and video games.

**MULTIPLE THREATS DETECTED.**

**DESIGNATION "SINGING SPEAR"**

**CLASSIFICATION : POWER WEAPON.**

**DATA : THE SINGING SPEAR IS ONE OF THE MYRIAD POWER WEAPONS WIELDED BY ELDAR PSYKERS. EXERCISE CAUTION – UNKNOWN ELDAR ALLOY IS CAPABLE OF PIERCING ADAMANTIUM WHEN WIELDED BY A SUFFICIENTLY POWERFUL PSYKER.**

**DESIGNATION "SHURIKEN PISTOL"**

**CLASSIFICATION : SHURIKEN WEAPON.**

**DATA : THE SHURIKEN PISTOL IS A FIREARM THAT UTILIZES A MINIATURE GRAVITIC ACCELERATOR TO PROPEL MONOMOLECULAR DISKS AT GREAT VELOCITIES. RANGE AND ACCURACY : LIMITED DUE TO LACK OF RIFLING IN BARREL. RATE OF FIRE : 100 ROUNDS PER SECOND.**

"Whoa!" He said. He didn't understand most of that, but 100 rounds per second was a whole lot of bullets. He didn't understand how she could keep that many bullets in such a small-looking gun, but it was probably best to take Scarab's word for it. He seemed to know an awful lot about guns and stuff, and it was better to be safe than sorry. Her weird spear-thing managed to hurt him, if only a little – he didn't want to take any chances with her guns. "Hey lady, cool it! What the heck is your problem?"

His answer came in the form of yet another battle cry as she charged at him with her spear, spinning it around left and right with such graceful movements that he might have thought she was dancing in tune to music in any other situation.

She closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, and with a great twirl of the spear that looked too big for someone of her build, the power weapon slashed into him at a horizontal angle.

This time he _really_ felt it.

"AAAAGGHH!"

He screamed out in pain. Every muscle in the front side of his body screamed out in agony for a split second before ceasing abruptly, the psychic shock having arced from the Singing Spear and conducting itself through his armor. The physical force behind the blow was considerable as well, and he found himself staggering backwards

The woman who had been so energetic in her assault, however, also seemed to suffer adverse effects from her own attack.

* * *

Taldeer was on one knee, _half-kneeling_ before her hated enemy. It was a shameful and disgraceful condition for a warrior to find herself in, she knew, but there was little she could do to rectify her situation now.

That one, singular attack had drained her of almost everything she had. She had meant for it to be a finisher, an execution. She had wanted it to be a tornado blow that rent apart his debased adamantium shell and gutted the foul monster from the inside out.

What she had not wanted nor expected was for her attack to falter as she reached out to the warp for power, and find herself firing on a spent plasti-crystal cartridge. The warp here was…calm. Not only that, but it was far, far away. It was as if the two worlds of her time, for so long almost fused at the hip like some kind of cruel defect of their conception, had been pushed apart by some unseen force and separated by an insurmountable barrier. She could feel it, even touch it to a degree, but it was as if a huge curtain of monofilament net had been drawn over it. She could see and feel the eldritch power just beneath the surface, but she could not pull it through. Like any net, there were holes and crevices through which she might draw forth a miniscule amount of power, but it would have been nowhere near enough to sustain her attack.

So for a brief moment, the hunger of the Singing Spear had begun to drain her own spirit to fuel it's unstoppable advance. It was all she could do to catch herself- to rein in the blow before she ripped apart her own soul trying to power an impossible strike.

The Power Weapons of her people were dangerous to both the foeman and the wielder, should they be handled improperly. She cursed herself for her foolishness as she knelt panting and gasping as she did everything in her power to hold her soul together and keep it bound to her body. The bindings between spirit and flesh had been…loosened, by her foolhardy maneuver, and she was just barely keeping herself together. The power behind the blow would have been a dangerous gambit even in her own time where the warp was violent and shifty and close as an assassin's knife on the back of her neck, but here…She was fortunate that she was so schooled in the ways of war. Had it not been for her own centuries-vast experience with the Singing Spear, her own soul would have been the fuel behind the slash, and it would have availed her nothing with so weak a tide within the warp. As it was, she had only evaded suicide by the _skin of her teeth_. Even now she was far from saved, as it would take an act of the Bloody-Handed God himself to stay the Chaos Lord's hand long enough for her to recover herself.

It was damning to think that she had let herself go to such a degree. She was a warrior- worse yet, a Farseer! It was the duty of her path to _guide_ and _protect_ her brethren… and now it would seem that she could do neither for even her own sake as she fell victim to her own lack of control. She felt like the lowest banshee neophyte, losing herself on the path of war and dying on her first battle. An embarrassment. A disgrace.

Just as the gigantic and corrupted warrior of black and gold and evil righted himself from the _tiny stumble_ her supposed execution strike had caused him, a shadow of black and white dashed in front of her with the speed of the warp. Her teacher…He had come to her rescue. She allowed herself a momentary glimmer of hope that her blunder in the heat of passion caused by her unacceptably rampant emotions had not completely doomed their galaxy's future.

* * *

Foolish. Foolish and deadly. Those were the words that graced the mind of the eldest of the Eldar as he stood before his kneeling apprentice. She had allowed her vision to be clouded by her heart, and because of that she had almost killed herself with her own weapon. The Singing Spear-and all Eldar Power Weapons-could be dangerous if they were handled without precise care and all due respect for their limitations. He had seen guardians and banshees lose themselves to their own weapons before, yes, but it was a rare occurrence even among neophytes and raw militias protecting the Craftworld from some unforeseen raid. _Never_ had he thought _Taldeer_, the heroine of Lorn V and Kronus, to fall victim to such misadventure. He realized the warp was too calm for many of their weapons to be of true use, but even a cursory mental glance towards the Empyrean could have enlightened her in that regard. Clearly she had been more shaken by the condition of the Mon'Keigh still cowering in their cold and steely prison worse than he had initially thought. Such empathy was laudable…to a point. But now was not the time to go soft…and because of her oversight, he would now have to face the Chaos Lord…

Alone. With half of his arsenal useless. In the face of the most powerful and feared servant of the Dark Gods who had ever lived. He would fight Horus Lupercal, albeit himself only half-armed for the moment (Thank Khaela Mensha Khaine for small war-blessings) , with only the most basic Wargear as well as his Staff of Ulthamar. He cursed himself for his lack of foresight on the condition of the warp, but he knew it would have been in vain. He had no clue as to the exact date of their quarry's temporal location, and any countermeasures he might have taken to amplify his access to the warp would have been equally suicidal to Taldeer's stunt should they have found themselves in the Galaxy _after_ the advent of She Who Thirsts. Still…

Horus Lupercal. The man who had fought the Emperor to a standstill. The man who had mortally wounded one of the few Mon'Keigh to ever truly command Eldrad's respect. Eldrad had faced insurmountable odds before, of course, but never against an opponent of this renown. Horus' name was still spoken in hushed whispers amongst the mewling slaves of the Dark Gods, and the Emperor's own servants had demonized the Lupercal into a figure of myth and legend. He was a devil, a monster. The Imperium's greatest traitor. The man who had felled the Emperor himself. The Great Enemy.

The current Warmaster of Chaos, though it was never spoken within his hearing if aloud at all, was but a pale shadow compared to his precursor. Ezekyle Abaddon, for all of his prowess and base cruelty, was no Horus. Had the Emperor yet lived, Abaddon would have been made short work of. The same could not be said of the one who had once been the greatest of the Primarchs and the Emperor's favorite son.

They stood there, like statues facing off in some cruel tableau of the Eldar's battle against their most hated enemy. The salty sea breeze caused Eldrad's robes to billow in the wind. Only the sounds of choppy waves breaking on the hard concrete of the wharf and the rumbling unbroken winds broke the silence.

"Great…Another one of you guys." The Lupercal commented dryly, in an almost sullen manner.

It was strange. Taldeer had been right on the mark when she said that the Warmaster's actions had been…subdued, at least for a Lord of Chaos. Horus had been famous for his violence and blood-rage, with his vicious melee savagery belying a subtle grace that only the genetically enhanced children of the Emperor could hope to accomplish. With the warp as it was and his Staff cut off from the Infinity Circuit due to Ulthwe not existing yet, it was looking like melee would be his best bet.

This was, of course, relatively speaking. While Eldar are generally much stronger than their appearance might suggest, and Eldrad was no exception, The Lupercal's sheer physical might as one of the Emperor's Primarch's as well as his Terminator power armor would easily trump Eldrad in a purely physical sense. If he was going to do this, he would have to make sure that he didn't get backed into a corner…Even a glancing hit from the Chaos Lord's mighty fists would surely shatter bone , if not sever limbs completely.

Once again, this normally would have been compensated for by an ambient psychic barrier that he kept around his person during battle. But as it was, Eldrad would have to at least hold off the Lupercal with martial skill alone, at least long enough for Taldeer to recover enough to retreat. He would not abandon his student to the nonexistent mercy of the Dark God's favorite slave.

Eldrad's only saving grace was the relative quality of their wargear. He tended to prefer not to rely on it as a crutch, but the Staff of Ulthamar would be his only chance here. The legendary force staff was forged from the purest of wraithbone. As Abaddon the Despoiler had learned so recently on Andante IV, it was more than capable of hewing through Mon-Keigh Terminator Power Armor. Even with the Empyrean so barren and depleted as it was in this millennium, Eldrad was confident that the amplification of his staff would boost his powers enough to at least damage his opponent.

Of course, Horus the Lupercal was no Ezekyle Abaddon. Eldrad had encountered both just as they fell to the Ruinous Powers…While Abaddon was merely the first captain of first company by their reckoning, Horus was the Warmaster of the Great Crusade. Favorite son of the Emperor and supreme commander of the Imperial military. By contrast, it was doubtful that the Emperor was even aware of Abaddon's existence. Surely his betrayal stung far less than the Lupercal's.

Speaking of the archtraitor, Eldrad eyed him warily as his imposing form stood just before him, the posture forced by the bulky and hunchbacked armor doing it's best to intimidate him. Taldeer had recovered only a little, and he was all but certain that her hasty gambit had effectively disabled her for the time being. This was a battle he would have to fight alone…

"I tried to warn them of your treachery…" He began in a smooth, ethereal whisper. "But you had already corrupted them. Every single one of them. It is a curse upon the galaxy that I failed to end your brother's _miserable_ life…And I _refuse_ to make the same mistake a second time. No one- Eldar, Mon'Keigh, or _any_ of the lesser races- Should be expected to share the galaxy with _you_…"

With all of the indignation and hatred he could muster at him-and this was considerable, especially considering the bitter memories dredged up by the mere mention of the Phoenician-Eldrad raised the Staff of Ulthamar and kicked off the crude rockcrete the humans seemed to favor even in these early days. His deceptively quick legs closed the distance between them at a break-neck pace, and he readied a blow against the Lupercal with all of the power he could bring to bear.

* * *

"Great, another one of you guys…" Billy remarked sarcastically. He frowned beneath his tusked helm. His Terminator armor thankfully protected him from the majority of the masked-lady's hit, which had still hurt a great deal. He would have tried to rub his back if such a thing was actually possible in the encumbering armor. He still felt the phantom pain of the strike, which seemed to have hurt a lot more than it should considering that it hadn't actually pierced through his armor. It was like a searing hot knife had been pressed up against his skin for a second, but hadn't actually cut him. Whatever it was…it certainly hadn't been an ordinary slice from a spear, although that would probably hurt him just as much had he not been wearing such thick armor…

"Scarab, who the heck is this guy? Is he a supervillain or something" He whispered inside his helmet so the new guy wouldn't hear. He was dressed somewhat similarly to the mean lady who'd attacked him while screaming so viciously. She was wearing a form-fitting, white battle-armor and robe with a bone-white helmet and glowing red eyes. She had a spear weapon and a sci-fi pistol.

And then there was this guy. He was wearing pitch black robes with white runes embroidered over the front, though the shape of his clothing suggested that he too wore armor beneath it. He wore flared shoulder guards and another high-crowned helmet, although his was black and embroidered with more white runes around the edges. His eyes glowed red as well, and his armor had more of the ruby jewels embedded within it on the helm and on some kind of extension that curved upwards and jutted from his upper back. In his hands he held a raised Staff-looking thing with more runes on it and a power-cable device. It ended in an almost spear-shaped triangle with a jewel embedded in the center. He was drawing a wicked looking sword with his free hand, which was curved in an odd shape. Still, he got the impression that it was deceptively sharp.

**UNKNOWN. INSUFFICIENT DATA. CURRENT SEARCH YIELDS "0" RESULTS.**

**HYPOTHESIS : DATA ENTRY CORRUPTION POSSIBLE LED TO DELETION OF RELEVANT DATA. IF = TRUE, THEN DATA MUST BE MANUALLY REAQUIRED.**

"Ugh. So you don't know _anything_ about this guy?"

**SCANNING…**

**MATCHES FOUND. WARGEAR "FORCE STAFF", WARGEAR "**

**WARGEAR : FORCE STAFF & FORCE SWORD**

**FORCE WEAPONRY AMPLIFIES PSYCHIC POTENTIAL WITHIN THE WIELDER AND UTILIZES PSYCHIC POWER TO RENDER MOST DEFENSES INEFFECTIVE. ALTHOUGH FORCE WEAPONRY IS LESS EFFECTIVE ON POWER ARMOR THAN ON AN UNARMORED INDIVIDUAL, WIELDERS OF SUCH WEAPONS SHOULD STILL BE APPROACHED WITH CAUTION AS THEY ARE ONE OF THE FEW INDIVIDUALS CAPABLE OF DAMAGING A SPACE MARINE PRIMARCH SUCH AS DESIGNATION "HOST". THE DANGER OF A GIVEN INDIVIDUAL WIELDING FORCE WEAPONS IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THAT INDIVIDUAL'S PSYCHIC POTENTIAL. **

"So this guy's a psychic?" He asked a little more sharply than he intended. It wasn't all that huge a revelation given the events of the past few days…but still, psychics were supposed to only exist in movies and comic books and stuff like that. Then again…so was time travel and space marines and power armor.

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

"Does…does that mean he can read my mind and stuff?" He asked nervously. How was he supposed to fight someone who could read his every move?

**NEGATIVE. CURRENT WARP DENSITY = NEGLIGIBLE. PSYKER'S UNABLE TO UTILIZE PSYCHIC POTENTIAL WITHIN CURRENT WARP SPARSITY. **

**ENEMY TARGET = PSYKER.**

**PSYKER POTENTIAL = CURRENTLY DISABLED.**

**SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION = ENGAGE.**

"What the heck is "Warp" supposed to mean?

Before Scarab could answer his confused query pertaining to that out-of-context explanation, he was interrupted by the weird robe guy. "…Should be expected to share the galaxy with _you_." His filtered voice echoed dangerously from the black cone-head helmet, green visors glowing with a burning hatred Billy had yet to see from any of the thugs or the Russian bad guys he'd scared straight over the last few days. There was definitely something different about this guy, not just the silly costume. The lady-and he was just assuming this due to the, uh…_formfitting_ cut of her battle armor-kneeling behind the man was glaring at him with equal hatred. Her red eyes-visors glowed with psychic rage that projected from her very soul, and the jewels embroidered all over her armor matched the brightness.

In this moment of distraction, Billy only _just_ registered the tornado blow headed his way from the bad guy's "Force Staff".

The triangle tip of the long, spear-like and cabled weapon was the first to slash across the air just before him-but that was all that had been required to do him tremendous harm.

For a split-second, the red gems flashed like the sun upon his eyes, filling his vision, and then he saw the wave.

It was a great slash, slicing open the air itself only to leave a great ark of lightning and a bright flash of pure _power_ in it's wake! At such speed that even his enhanced eyes could not follow, the arcing wave of power scythed through the air, producing a high-pitched ringing sound that split his ears in pain. He howled and grasped at his helmet with his free hand, right before the wave hit him across the chest!

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" His deep voice grated out of his throat painfully.

_SLUSHUURK! Kzzaaakkk…._

That was the sound, but what really made him scream was the feeling. He was on fire! The flash and the wave _burst_ across his chest and he was in utter and complete agony! It felt like someone had splashed an entire pot full of boiling hot water all over his chest…And…his heart…he couldn't feel his heart! It was like it was beating…but it wasn't! He felt something pulsing on…on the _other_ side of his chest?! What the heck?

He felt his armor with his free hand, and idly noticed that he had been knocked to the ground by the bad guy's force weapon…He…he couldn't feel the left side of his chest at all. Billy had learned in the fourth grade that the heart was supposed to be on the left side of the body. He tried to see if he was really messed up or just numb, but the armor was getting in the way. He couldn't see below the ring-like armor that encased his neck without physically hunching over.

"Scarab! Oh, god, Scarab! Am I…Am I okay? Am I _dying_? Scarab?!"

**NEGATIVE.**

"B-but my-my heart, I-I can't feel my heart, and I feel…I feel something in the right side of my chest beating!"

**HOST ORGANISM'S PRIMARY HEART DAMAGED. SECONDARY HEART IS UTILIZING OVERDRIVE ENZYMES TO COMPENSATE. STATUS = FUNCTIONAL. RECOMMEND = UTILIZATION OF REVITALIZATION FLUIDS TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO HOST ORGANISM'S INTERNAL INJURIES FROM FORCE ATTACK IN TANDEM WITH LARRAMAN CELLS.**

**FORCE WEAPON = α CLASSIFICATION.**

**THREAT ASSESSMENT…**

**DIRE.**

**RE-EVALUATION RECCOMENDATION…**

**RECOMMEND = AVOID FURTHER DAMAGE. NEUTRALIZE THREAT IMMEDIATELY. POTENTIALLY LETHAL THREAT TO HOST ORGANISM = UNACCEPTABLE. RECOMMEND MAXIMUM RETALIATION AVAILABLE (IE COMBI-FLAMER).**

He had…he had _two_ hearts? And one of them was _broken?_! Oh god…Oh _god_, holy _crap_…he'd…he'd almost _died_! This guy…

He righted himself as best as he could. It was actually rather easy due to his great strength and surprising agility. He looked at the man across from him- no, he sent a menacing death glare at him. This guy- he'd tried to _kill him_! Billy had just been standing there, trying to help some poor, innocent women from being sold like cattle by soulless monsters who called themselves men, and _this guy_ was trying to _kill him_…He bet this guy was in cahoots with those scumbags…and he'd tried to _kill him_!

Well…Scarab was right. This guy had already taken out one of his hearts for Pete's sake! If he did end up killing this guy…would it really be murder? Besides, Scarab still had plenty of his juice left. This guy was too big a threat to ignore…and at this point, it was self-defense…

_No! _He thought. _I won't do it! A_ hero _doesn't kill_ anyone! _No matter how much they deserve it…even if it's dangerous._

Did he have a choice…Yes. Yes he did. There's always a choice, and the decision to take life away from another human being, no matter how evil they were…was one that he did not have the will- no, that he _refused _to take. He had power already, and it finally dawned on him that Scarab might just be another test.

Maybe it had offered him a way out intentionally…To make up for failures beyond his control, yes…but also to test his character. He knew that just because you _could_ do something and get away with it scot free didn't mean you _should_. Yes, he was _sure_ of it now.

Scarab was another test. To see if he would abuse his power now that he could reverse his decisions. Well, he had news for the devil or the ghost people or God or whoever. "Billy Batson is a superhero now!" He said out loud. "He doesn't give in, no matter what! He'll fight evil wherever it shows it's ugly mug, and he'll do it the _right_ way!" He yelled into the heavens his proclamation of adherence to his own personal code of honor and justice. It felt…good, to say that. It felt right.

But just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bad guy who had been standing stock still with force staff raised come out of his momentary stupor. "I'm not sure what you're playing at, Lupercal…but it won't work. I am deaf to your lies. I see _through_ your deceit. You shall not deter me from _ending_ you." The bad guy raised both weapons high above his head and crouched slightly, like someone right out of a kung-fu movie. With staff and blade in either hand, he seemed to dance forth upon the wharf and carefully made his way to Billy's position. He'd seemed to have been thrown practically all the way to the other side of the bridge, now. The lady who had been resting or something was now nowhere to be seen. "Look fast here, Lupercal!" Shouted the bad guy with renewed vigor. He began to spin the staff above him, using only one hand. It was like a helicopter blade that just didn't lift him off the ground, but Billy had seen enough Bruce Lee films at penny theatres or at the communal VCR in the subway he and some of the other orphans used when they got lucky to know that spinning your staff like that meant you were about to really whale on somebody. "Your impending _DOOM_ approaches! I have _foreseen_ it!"

Not wanting to take that risk, Billy readied his gun, summoning it to his free hand again. He had lost it when the bad guy got the first strike against him, but it looked like he could summon it from wherever it was even if he'd never actually dismissed it. "Stop right there, conehead! I don't want to shoot you if I don't have to…But I will defend myself!" He put as much determination and menace in his voice as a ten year old could reasonably be expected to…but he hoped that his now terrifying baritone helped compensate a little.

Apparently not, though, as the bad guy began to laugh out loud without slowing his approach by even a modicum. "Ahahahaha! Oh, the irony. If you were not a master of deceit and intrigue, you might have almost confused me. But as I told you before and now reaffirm…I shall not falter. Today, _'Heretic'_. You. Will. Die." His tone turned icy at the end, and Billy would normally shiver involuntarily. Something stopped him though, and his posture remained solid. He wondered what _else_ the ghost people had done to him besides giving him _two hearts_.

**QUERY INADVISABLE AT THIS JUNCTURE. CURRENT COMBAT SITUATION IS OF HIGHER PRIORITY DUE TO THREAT PRESENTED TO HOST ORGANISM'S SURVIVAL. RECOMMEND = POSTPONE UNTIL AFTER THE FIGHT.**

Billy frowned. _Yeah, I know…now's not a good time Scarab_. He said subvocally. He had picked up that Scarab seemed to be able to read his thoughts, and it didn't seem like a good idea to let this guy know about Scarab if he could help it. He fired off a few warning shots in the bad guy's general direction. "I'm warning you! Back off!" He yelled.

But each resounding _Blam!_ Sound from his Combi-Flamer was accompanied by another. As the bad guy spun his staff around he began to twirl it in front of him as well, slashing out and blocking the bullets with both the tip and the end of his force weapon.

_Holy Moley!_ Billy thought. _He's just like Darth Maul with that thing! _Darth Maul twirled his Force Staff again and again as Billy continued firing, testing his degenses.

They proved sound as each and every shot was deflected by the spinning staff as Darth Maul drew ever closer. His shining green eye-visors glinted dangerously in the sunlight, and Billy-absurdly-thought he detected a hint of smugness coming from the smooth and featureless helmet somehow. "What's the matter, Lupercal?" Goaded the obvious sith lord with a hint of amusement in his voice. "Ill-prepared for an opponent of _my_ caliber? Perhaps you have grown _soft _with all this time, terrorizing only those too weak to defend themselves from your evil."

What?! _Billy_ was the evil one? Where the heck did this guy get off, telling him to his face that _He_ was the evil one even when _Darth Maul_ over here was trying to stop him from having _freakin' human traffickers_ arrested and sent to jail?! Oh boy, this guy had _done it_ now! "You…" He began, but then stopped. He frowned. This guy kept calling him "Lupercal"… Didn't Scarab say…?

Oh.

"Wait." He interrupted himself. "Stop! You're making a mistake! I'm not who you think I am!" Even as he said the words, Billy clamped down on the ridged pump of the flamer attachment to his Combi-Flamer and spewed forth a gout of promethium to the concrete ground. It sprayed in a narrow arc that finally seemed to give the now questionably bad guy pause…at least for a moment.

But before Billy could say anything, the man raised his force staff high in the air, gripping it near the bottom. In a single instant he brought it downwards in a swift and deadly diagonal arc, sweeping away the flames harmlessly to either side and only narrowly missing Billy. Billy backed up further down the wharf, his feet just meters away from the ocean. Several more of the shipping crates had burst apart as Darth Maul had knocked him around with that force staff, and Billy doubted he could swim in this armor…He needed to solve this, _fast. "_I said-"

"No!" Hissed the man before him, black robes billowing in the salty sea breeze. His green eye-visors blazed with fury, and he spread his arms to grip both force weapons in either hand apart, ready to slice across him to deliver another deadly rain of blows… "No more of your lies! You will die today, Horus Lupercal! No one can save you! Not Tzeentch! Not Khorne! Not Nurgle!" He was poised to strike, and Billy had nowhere to turn back to. His back was to the sea and he had no idea what to do. This man was completely convinced that Billy _was_ Horus Lupercal. Whoever this man was, he seemed to be losing his stuff. He was so angry, so livid! He must have really had a bone to pick with this Horus guy whose Body Billy had been given… and the rant continued at an even louder pitch "Not **Slaanesh!** No one! No Daemon's! No Monsters from Hell or Empyrean shall stop me from cleansing the Galaxy of your _taint_! Not any of your _Dark Go_-" For a moment, he was quiet, and then _it_ happened.

"HUUUURRKKK…!" A blood-curdling howl whispered out of the man's throat as he fell to his knees, force staff and blade clattering to the ground with a high-pitched clang. "Aghuh…huh….urk…!" The man in the black robes now fully lay on his side, unable to turn on his back due to the large protrusion of armor mounted upon his upper back area. The Jewels grew…dimmer, now. They were like light bulbs that had suddenly had their circuit broken, and even the green eyes of his helm grew dark. And the noises he was making! He writhed on the ground, shaking and jerking in all directions. He sounded like he was _choking on his own screams. _

"Aghuuuh…AAAAHHH…Ack..Ah! AGGHHA!" The filter of his mask made it the noises worse, making them into creepy echoes of a drowning man who sometimes managed to get to the surface long enough to gasp for air and scream his lungs out.

"H-hey…" Billy started lamely. He reached an enormous gauntlet out in concern. "Are…Are you okay, dude? You look like you're…" The man jerked back suddenly, arms reaching to his back, and then towards his weapons. He seemed…unsure of whether he wanted to try to fight or flee, panic now added to his list of agonies as he continued to writhe and convulse upon the concrete wharf. It was…sad, for lack of a better word. The being that had stood before him only moments ago had seemed _invincible_, and now he helplessly lay agonizing on the ground like he was having a stroke. _I was afraid of that…?_ He asked himself silently. The man seemed so…small, now. He was about half as tall as Billy, and now he was lying on the ground and apparently _dying._

Billy didn't even have to think about whether he wanted to help the man. He had gotten…uncharacteristically angry, when he was called evil by this guy, and that was actually really worrying. Billy had gotten upset before, sure, but he'd never felt _rage_ like that for anyone…except maybe his uncle.

But this man had just been making an honest mistake! He didn't know that Billy wasn't really this Horus guy, (who he'd need to consult Scarab about later…) and even if he had Billy still would've helped him. It was the right thing to do! The _heroic_ thing to do!

But what _to_ do? He looked again at the convulsing mass of black robes and bone-like runes on the ground. He approached the man closer, and kicked the Force Weapons to the side so the guy wouldn't hurt himself trying to get at them.

It's not like he could just call the hospital, even if he did have a phone and knew their number. For one thing, he himself was a giant, death-themed robo-knight from the forty-first millennium. Scarab could probably call someone, he guessed, but…wait! That was it!

"Scarab!" He called.

**QUERY? RECOMMEND POSTPONEMENT UNTIL HOSTILE TARGET IS COMPLETELY NEUTRALIZED. SUGGESTION : POSTPONE QUERY UNTIL THREAT TO HOST IS ELIMINATED.**

"Look, Scarab, it was all a big misunderstanding! He didn't want to hurt me, he wanted to hurt this Horus guy…"

**ERROR. HOST BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE MATCH FOUND = DESIGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL" = 100%.**

**DESIGNATION "HOST" = DESIGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL".**

**ASSERTION = "HE WANTED TO HURT THIS HORUS GUY" = TRUE.**

**ASSERTION = "HE DIDN'T WANT TO HURT ME" = FALSE/ERRONEOUS.**

"Ugh…Not _you too_, Scarab!" He couldn't believe it! Billy was sure that whoever's body he was in now and whatever he looked like, he was still Billy Batson underneath it all. But all that could wait. Right now, this guy needed some help. And by the looks of it…Scarab would be the one who'd have to help him. "Look, we don't have time for this right now! That guy looks like he's dying!"

**AFFIRMATIVE. HOSTILE TARGET'S VITAL SIGNS HAVE UNDERGONE SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN (ELAPSED TIME) (4) MINUTES SINCE LAST SCAN. CONGRATULATIONS, DESIGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL". **

"I didn't want him to die! At first I thought he might be working with those crooks-" Billy gestured vaguely behind him to the wreckage of the shipping crates where most of the bad guys lay unconscious. Tiberiu Bulat himself was still motionless on the ground, and all of them would be out for quite some time. "But, I…I think he just wanted to kill Horus…" He shook his head and frowned.

"He might be a bad gut after all, but…Look at him!" He directed, although it was impossible to tell if Scarab was really looking or not.

**SCANNING…**

Well, apparently he was. Billy stared as the masked man still writhed on the ground, twitching violently at rapid and random intervals. He struggled like…like he was on fire, or something. He was gurgling in his throat and choking on nothing. A sad, pathetic sight. It actually made Billy wince in sympathetic phantom pain as the mysterious adversary jerked back and forth so horribly. He wished there was something he could do to help, but…he wasn't a doctor. For all the good this big armor and his gun were, they would be of no use in this situation. But Scarab had actually brought that gangster back to life after being _dead_! If anyone could fix this guy up, it was Scarab.

**SCAN COMPLETE.**

**MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS: ADULT MALE – UNKNOWN SPECIES. EXTREMELY SEVERE PSYCHIC SHOCK – CURRENTLY IN PROGRESS. NO PHYSICAL DAMAGE DETECTED OUTSIDE OF CRANIAL CAVITY. NEURAL SCAN SUGGESTS AN OVERDRAW OF DANGEROUS WARP-BASED ENERGY AND REVEALS AN ACTIVE CONNECTION TO AN UNKNOWN PSYCHIC ENTITY. CONNECTION CURRENTLY EXPANDING. DEPLOY COUNTERMEASURES?**

"Yes!" Ordered Billy desperately. From what he could make out from Scarab's complex manner of speech, he could tell that whatever was hurting this guy-who was apparently not human, exactly- was getting _worse_. He could believe it, too. If anything, the twitching and flailing of limbs coming from the struggling being on the ground was approaching a fever pitch.

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

With that one word, Scarab retracted his elongated mandibles from around Billy's armor-plated neck. He pushed off of Billy's chestplate with surprising force from his spindly and numerous legs, landing a few feet away on the solid ground. With high-pitched metallic chittering his tiny legs quickly carried it to the man on the ground. In mere moments, Scarab had crawled on top of the struggling and flailing man, his pointed appendages clinging to his robes. He crawled all over him until he reached the black, high-crowned helmet. His legs retracted slightly and bent at the joints, where the ends spun rapidly into tiny drills that burrowed deep into the material of the helm…and kept on going. With an ominous _whizzing _sound, the drill continued for a few moments. The man's struggling became much more energetic violent, almost panicky. It was quiet for a second, and then the drills retracted further into the Scarab's forelegs, and they were immediately replaced by wires that seemed to move about like snakes coming out from Scarab's chassis. They slithered into the holes made by the leg-drills in area above the helmet's eyes, which no longer glowed green. Abruptly, the struggling stopped and the man went completely limp.

"Scarab…?" Billy asked, unsure. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to let Scarab try to fix the guy. He'd only used Scarab's miracle medicine once now, and _this_ guy wasn't actually a human. Thankfully, though, Scarab dismissed his fears a moment later.

**ACCESSING CORPUS…REPAIRING NEURAL DAMAGE…REPAIRING NEURAL CHEMICAL BALANCE…AMPLIFYING PSYCHIC FORTITUDE…REPAIRING FRACTURED MENTAL SELF-IDENTIDY… … …DONE. SET UP BLOCKS FROM FUTURE ACCESS ATTEMPTS BY UNKNOWN PSYCHIC ENTITY?**

"Uh…okay. Yeah, that'd probably be a good idea." There was no telling whether this guy would be…_attacked_, again, by whatever was doing _this_ to him. Billy might not be around to help him next time…so better to be safe than sorry.

**AFFIRMATIVE. INITAITING…COMPLETE. PSYCHIC BLOCKS ERECTED TO PREVENT FUTURE ACCESS ATTEMPTS BY UNKNOWN ENTITY. WITHDRAWING.**

With that, Scarab withdrew his tendrils from the masked man's skull-like mask, robotically crawling back to Billy and all the way up his considerable frame. It re-extended his pincers, which wrapped around Billy's neck and attached to form the Black Scarab amulet.

**MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.**

Suddenly, Billy heard a wheezing gasp emanate from within the helmet of the fallen warrior who had tried his damnedest to kill him just minutes before. The steady rise and fall of the runes and robes of the man's chest indicated that he could now breathe normally, at least. Billy breathed a sigh of relief and congratulated his robotic companion. "Good job, Scarab! You saved this guy!"

**AFFIRMATIVE. SUBJECT WILL REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS IN APPROXIMATELY 1.022 SECONDS.**

He was up before Scarab had even finished that statement. Like a bolt of black and white lightning, the fallen warrior was on his feet in less than an instant. Without stopping to ask questions or recover most of his faculties, he dove to the side with prodigious speed, ignoring Billy's reflexive grasping to stop him. He weaved through Billy's comparatively cumbersome limbs with fluidic grace, going for the staff Billy had kicked away mere moments before! Billy needed to put a stop to this or they'd be right back where they started…

Billy grasped wildly to his side (He couldn't actually see the masked man from this angle, given his obstructive shoulder guards), and somehow managed to catch him around the waist. Doubtless he was still somewhat groggy from his ordeal and Scarab's makeshift operation, or he wouldn't have caught him in time.

For the first time, the masked warrior was firmly in Billy's grasp. Taking advantage of his vastly superior physical strength, it was a simple matter to drag the struggling warrior back in front of him.

"…No! No! I won't do it! I refuse! I refuse to die here!" Although his arms were trapped within his steely grip, the man still kicked at him with his legs, half hidden beneath his rune-embroidered robes. The blows were ineffective though, and only glanced across his hugely armored chest and tasset. "Urgh…" Still he struggled further, futilely. "What have you _done_ to me? I was…_She Who Thirsts_…she had a-assailed me…_What did you do?!"_ He demanded, eye-visors once again flashing an ethereal green light.

"Only saved your life." Billy replied. "You'd think you'd be more grateful about it, but _noooo_… You went straight for your force doohickeys as soon as you got back up! Seriously, what the heck is wrong with you, guy?" Billy asked earnestly. Really, he didn't know what this guy's beef with _Horus_ or whoever was, but it was nothing to do with _him_.

"Y-you…you mock me?! Did you save me only for your taunts?! Or perhaps you wished to reserve the pleasure of making my death as agonizing as you can manage…Is that it Lupercal?! Is that was this is about, after all these years?" Billy had no idea of the history between this guy and Horus, so he decided to just let him finish his rant. "The endless slaughter, the eternal destruction…Does it bring you some measure of _joy_…? Are your _two hearts_ so _black_ that you truly _revel_ in the suffering of your own kind? Does extinguishing the _brief_ sparks in the darkness that comprises the lives of your race really make you that _happy…?_" The last question was a mere faint whisper, but the otherwise mysterious effect was lost on the only member of the dramatic warrior's audience. After all, Billy had _no idea what the heck he was talking about…_

"Uh huh…." Was Billy's eloquent reply. "Look pal, I don't know what your talking about, crazy guy. Like, at all. Near as I can tell, you've got me confused with someone else…" He tried to explain, but the way the masked warrior ceased his struggling and raised his head a little past his shoulders gave the impression of _stupefied_ disbelief, not sudden comprehension. Billy had no idea when he'd learned to interpret such subtle body-language signals with such accuracy, but it was pretty neat. He'd never been that observant before he…_changed_.

"You…you cannot _honestly_ expect me to believe such an _obvious lie_, can you…? Unless your folly has multiplied exponentially since we last encountered one another. An impressive feat, for the likes of you…And, I am not. Your. _'Pal'_." The last word was spit out like deadly poison or a accidentally drunken expired milk. He could almost _feel_ the _hatred_ behind the word.

Billy didn't take it personally. At least, he tried not to. But this guy was really starting to get on his nerves. "Ugh, I _already told you! _I'm not this 'Horus', or…or this 'Lupercal' person your looking for! My name is BILLY! BILLY BATSON! And, uh…oops." Whuh-oh! Secret identidy alert! Crap!

**RECCOMMENDATION : REFRAIN FROM DIVULGENCE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION TO POTENTIALLY HOSTILE TARGETS. (ADDENDUM : STRONGER ARGUMENTS TYPICALLY REQUIRE DEFINITIVE PROOF EITHER FOR OR AGAINST ANY ALLEGATIONS).**

"What." Half-asked, half-stated the masked warrior in the billowing robes. The sea breeze was strong that morning, and the water choppily crashed against the wharf. "…Billy Batson…?" He whispered to himself. He rolled the name around on his tongue, trying to come to terms with the concept as if hearing the sound again would shed some light on it. He paused for a moment, and then looked up sharply at Billy with such whipcord suddenness that it almost made him flinch. "…Say I do believe you. And I'm not saying I do, but hypothetically…What possible explanation is there that you have come to possess not only the BODY of the Lupercal, but also his _psychic signature_? The only reason that I was even able to find you here was by following the trail your warp-presence left within the Empyrean…there's no way that you could be anyone _but_ Horus Lupercal!" He finished, although he sounded more confused than decisive. Billy decided to explain things truthfully as best as he could. Honesty was the best policy, after all.

**ASSERTION : THE VALIDITY OF STATEMENT "HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY" IS DUBIOUS ACCORDING TO NUMEROUS THEORETICAL, HISTORICAL, CONCEPTUAL, AND PHILOSOPHICAL RECORDS. PROVIDING COMPLETELY ACCURATE HISTORICAL DATA IS INADVISABLE AT THIS JUNCTURE.**

_Shush _Billy said sub-vocally. _I'm sure that this guy had a perfectly reasonable reason for wanting to take down this Horus Lupercal guy…maybe he was a villain and this guy's a superhero from the future or something!_

"Well, I was wandering around downtown one day, looking for something to eat." Billy began, and though he couldn't see the man's eyes, his head was raised in an attentive posture. "And this girl my age came up and told me that some of the other kids were gonna be making some food together with some supplies they scrounged up. I was still a little hungry, you know? So I went along with her. But…there weren't any other orphans down there…But there were some other…_people?_ I guess. They said they were there because I'd been chosen. For being pure and good, or something. I never thought about myself as special, or anything unique. I was just another kid down on his luck…But these guys said there was something special about me, so they said that they were going to give me some of their power, so I could use it for good! There were four of them, and they drew these weird symbols on me that disappeared as soon as they finished…like they sunk into my skin or something. Then there was this big flash of light! I guess I fell asleep or passed out or something…And when I woke up, I looked like this!" He finished, gesturing to himself with the end of his combi-flamer, still locked in his grip.

There was silence. He couldn't tell if the man believed him or not, thanks to the mask. Those glowing green eye-visors just stared at his own red orbs continuously, projecting on the better-than-life-like screen within his helm. It was like putting your face up against an LCD screen, but even more clearly in image.

"W-What were their names…?" He breathed in a whisper, the mere hint of a tremble in his voice. Maybe he was starting to believe him?

"Ah…I don't actually know…they never said. But they sure looked spooky! One of 'em was a big bird-man-person, and he was wearing the robes and had big ole' black eyes. The other guy looked, well…he looked like a demon or something. He had red skin and big bat-wings and he had really sharp teeth!" The warrior still tightly held in his free arm had ceased all pretense of struggle. He was absolutely still. "And then there was this really-uh, well, this really _chubby_ guy…He looked the scariest. He looked sick, like with green skin and everything. The last one of them was the girl my age who'd brought me down there…but her voice was all funny then, like more than one person was talking at the same time. I think they were ghosts or, or spirits or something. But they're the reason I look like I do now. I woke up with the armor already on, and I don't think I need to eat or sleep anymore either."

The statue-still warrior broke his silence. "…No…" He said quietly. "You have to sleep at least once every two weeks…As for food, I am uncertain. Perhaps you no longer require it now that you have much more powerful…_energies_, to fuel you." He seemed lost in thought.

"But…that means…If you really aren't Horus, then why did I sense such danger in here? In this time…Unless, and you never attacked me…You don't know how to use your psychic powers…why would I have…No. No! NO! It is not possible! No, it cannot be true!" His tone gradually rose, until he eventually began to shout into the sky. "I don't believe it! No! That CAN'T BE RIGHT!" He yelled into the heavens, struggling to free himself from Billy's hand.

"Whoah, whoah! Slow down there, guy! What's wrong now?" He asked earnestly. Part of being a superhero was helping people in need, and this man certainly seemed to be in distress.

"The vision…The signs…could it have…No! I can't have done it! _I won't believe it!_" He bordered on hysterics, now, flailing about in shock and anxiety.

"Look, I'm not sure what's wrong, but c'mon. Don't freak out. There's always a way to fix it if something goes wrong! That's what heroes are for, right?" He pressed him, trying to get him to calm down. He was going to hurt himself if he kept this up.

"You-you-you're…really…you're _really_ not Horus, are you?" He asked in hysterics. He almost seemed to giggle, as if at some private joke. "No, you're telling the truth. There's no way in the Warp that Horus Lupercal would say anything _half_ that naïve…" Suddenly, the hysteria stopped. His mask jerked up, as if in intense focus and concentration. Billy…didn't get this guy. He had such intense emotions that Billy could almost feel them himself…but he switched between them so fast! He was panicking one moment and then ultra-cool concentrated and focused the next. People from the future were _weird_.

"Wait. Just, just wait a moment…You're not Horus, so you didn't attack me! Then the only explanation is…" He trailed off. "But that would mean…Taldeer!" He shouted suddenly. It sounded like a name, or something. He looked around frantically from side to side. "Taldeer! Taldeer! Can you here me?! Are you there?! _Taldeer!_" He kept shouting that name. Taldeer…was that the mean lady who was screaming at him and got tired after that one attack? Wait…_oh crap_! Maybe she was attacked by that 'Unknown Warp Entity'-thingy the same way that this guy had been…only Scarab wasn't around to help _her_….

"Your friend!" Billy asked urgently. "Is she in trouble? Was whatever that thing was that attacked you also after her?!" This could be bad…This guy hadn't been looking so good when Scarab saved him…

"I…Yes…Taldeer! Answer me, damn it! Don't listen to whatever drivel that _whore_ is spewing into your ears! She is the _queen_ of _LIES! She Who Thirsts_ will bring you only sorrow! Taldeer, answer me if you can hear my voice!" He kept shouting for his lost companion.

"Where is she?" Billy asked automatically. "I can help her!" And with those few words, and only a single moments hesitation, the masked man frantically tried to answer as best as he could. "I don't know! She disappeared when I…when I engaged you…I thought she was going to sneak up behind you…or to…or to rescue those slaves! Maybe she's still in there!" He gestured in the general direction of the shipping crate at the end of the docks…where those girls must've still been trapped! Holy _crap_! Billy had forgotten all about them! _Dang it_! He _knew_ he was forgetting something! "Go!" The warrior shouted. "Move quickly, and release me! We _must_ to save her!" Billy did so, slackening his grip on the warrior. Without a single second's hesitation, he was off like The Flash from Central City…or at least nearly that fast Billy had never actually seen The Flash except on TV's inside store windows he sometimes passed by, or on the jumbo-tron in the Square…so he supposed he wasn't exactly an expert on the subject.

He followed the black-and-white Flash impersonator all the way to the Shipping crate, with the bolt torn open and the doors cut in half by some kind of blade. He was sickened by what he saw.

Inside were the cowering women, eighteen in all. As he walked in, he saw that he had apparently missed one of the criminals…But it looked like Taldeer had picked up the slack. He wasn't so much in the crate as he was all around the entrance…including some pieces stuck or hanging from the ceiling…His enhanced senses picked up all the smells and sights in ultra high definition, and it was all he could do to keep from retching at the shocking and disturbing sensations.

_G-god… _He thought. He had never seen anything this…this brutal…And it wasn't just the murder, either…at least not _that_ one.

He looked at the 'contents' of the crate. Beaten, bloody, and a lot of battered _women and children_…All in various states of dress and health. Many of them were crying…some had fainted…and three, lined up in a neat row in the back…made no movements at all. Judging by what Scarab had said earlier, and by what his enhanced senses could tell, Two women and one girl had…had…gone. Gone up to heaven.

The crate was filthy, and smelled completely putrid. How…how could they _do this_? How could _people _treat each other like…like _animals?!_ This was worse than the absolute worst conditions he had seen in the roughest neighborhoods here in Fawcett City. How could…how could anyone be so _evil_…?

And then he saw the third body lying there, knelt over by a tall man in black robes and helmet. It was a pile of ghost white robes, spread out over the dirty floor. Her armor was jet black, as was her helm, but…her eyes no longer possessed the same piercing red glow that Billy recalled before. And she lay completely still. The man in black shook, slightly. Trembling as he knelt over his friend.

Billy slowly approached without saying a word. He hoped his fears would prove untrue.

His hopes were soon dashed by the man's next words.

"She…she's…my apprentice…my student…my friend…she's dead…" He didn't need enhanced hearing or impressive knowledge of body language to hear the tears in the man's voice. He knelt over his fallen friends lifeless body, still gripping an empty hand. Her spear and pistol lay fallen on the ground beneath her.

"Scarab." Billy's voice was hard. This woman…she may have been mean, and even a _killer_…But she didn't deserve to die here. This man didn't to lose his friend either…not while Billy had anything to say about it. He may have attacked Billy, but his pain was real. It was intense, like someone had just opened released a cloud of pure misery into the air…Billy felt his pain, somehow. There was an ache in one of his hearts, now, even if he wasn't sure how that was possible. He guessed it was the _human_ one.

No one was going to die if he could help it. Not on _this_ hero's watch.

"How much of your Revitalization Fluid do you have left?" He asked.

**APPROXIMATION : 82%. LAST USE WAS THE CRIMINAL NEUTRALIZED AT THE DOCKS BEFORE YOU OBTAINED DESIGNATION "BLACK SCARAB".**

**FOUR CORPSES DETECTED WITHIN SENSORIUM RANGE. REVITALIZE PARTIALLY OR COMPLETELY [Y/N]? INSTALL NEUROSYTE [Y/N]? **

"Revive them completely and don't mess with anything, Scarab. Make sure they're alive again and healed, that's it." He ordered sternly. It wouldn't be right to do anything weird to them when they were dead…It scared him that Scarab would even ask. But he supposed that it might be another test of character thrown his way by the ghost people…or whoever they were that gave him his powers.

**AFFIRMATIVE. COMMENCING REVITALIZATION PROCESS. ESTIMATED USAGE OF REVITALIZATION FLUID = 51%. NEUROSYTE ORGANISMS AND 58% OF ALL NURGLE-CELLS PURGED FROM SOLUTION. ADMINISTERING…**

Scarab hopped off of Billy's neck once again, and crawled over to the three girls lined up on the ground. With miraculous speed, his pincers extended and morphed into needle form, injecting the miraculous liquid into each of the girls.

The surviving prisoners looked on in a mixture of horror, fascination, and, when the process was complete, awe.

With three simultaneous gasps for air and sudden fluttering of eyelids, a steady rise and fall of rapid breathing began to take the three girls. They were confused, scared, shocked…and disbelieving. "…Anya?" And older girl asked. "Anya!" She shouted, tears of joy streaming from her eyes. The other watched in confusion and in some cases, joy. A pile began to build up around the revived girls of happy embraces and tears of joy and…it was almost tangible!

Hope, joy, love. He had not noticed their absence, in such horrible straits as he had been for many months. But now…it was almost like it permeated the air! It was like a constant, happy ringing in the back of his head. It felt…right. Good.

As for the man in black. He was…dumbstruck. Billy didn't know how he picked up on that feeling, exactly, as waves of joy and hope crashed onto him, the smallest glimmer of which came from a…spark, within the man. He couldn't really attribute it to having a knack for reading body language now, as the man was stock still and motionless…but how else could he explain it?

The man was silent, and did nothing save lean in closer still over Taldeer's body as Scarab closed the distance between them. He flinched as the tendrils drilled into Taldeer's flexibly armored neck, but took no action to interfere.

And he watched as a miracle occurred. At first, there was nothing. And then Scarab slowly withdrew his tendrils as and crawled back to Billy and up to his spot around his neck. And there it was. A spark, a tiny flicker. Light began to shine within Taldeer's eye-visors once more, and they flickered on and off for what seemed like minutes. And then, they stopped. They were active once more, the bright, crimson light of life rekindled within her fallen form.

**MISSION COMPLETE. **

A gasp, a huge intake of air. Her head and chest raised and expanded as her lungs filled with the salty sea air, flooding in from the entrance.

"Taldeer!" Shouted the man kneeling over his friend on the ground. He gently embraced her, holding her at the shoulders. "Taldeer, are you okay?! Can you hear me?!" He asked.

"El…El…drad…Eldrad…" She managed to get out in a breathy whisper, her voice still weakened. Scarab should have healed any damage from her seizure, but maybe she was still weak from it or something? And apparently the man in black's name was Eldrad…Huh. People from the future had odd names.

He didn't want to interrupt them, as it looked like they were having a moment. In fact, the whole crate had gone silent. The girls, the revived victims, Billy…everyone's eyes were on the teacher and student who were now reunited, even in the face of death.

"You aren't rid of me yet, Farseer…" Billy heard Taldeer say, true and honest joy hidden behind a mask of amusement.

"I…I'm happy." Eldrad said. He seemed…dumbfounded. He had no idea what to say. "I'm glad that you…I'm glad...I am overjoyed that you are still with me, Taldeer. I thought that you were forever lost to the Great Enemy but you…how do you yet live…? A Scarab beetle came and injected you and the others…" He seemed honestly wonderous, so Billy enlightened the two of them.

"It's Black Scarab." He supplied. All eyes turned to him, including Eldrads. Although, he sensed, a dawning feeling of horror and despair began to take hold over Taldeer. "There's this…'Revitalization Fluid'. It can bring dead people back to life, as long as he gets to them quick enough…" He explained, somewhat sheepishly. Wide eyes stared disbelievingly from all but a few, who were too overtaken with happiness and appreciation for another chance at life to notice. It seemed…odd, that everyone seemed to understand him. He hadn't expected all of them to speak English…he supposed it didn't really matter.

"Why?" A voice cut through the silence. It came from Taldeer. It was a harsh, clipped and sharp sound, grating on his ears. Eldrad turned to regard his friend, getting up and offering her a hand to help her to her feet. "We…have much to discuss. But in summation? Taldeer, this is Billy Batson. Mr. Batson, this is Farseer Taldeer, of the Craftworld Ulthwe. And I…I am Chief Farseer Eldrad Ulthran, leader of the Council of Seers of Craftworld Ulthwe." He said, a hint of almost imperceptible pride in his voice. It was gone in an instant, and the searing brand of shame that overtook it was anything but imperceptible. "I…I have made…a terrible mistake." He said, and despair once again emanated from the direction of the black robed 'Farseer.'

"Explain." Taldeer demanded.

* * *

**A/N : I realize that Scarab may seem a bit overpowered, but it at least makes some sense. The Scarab was already very technologically advanced, and capable of healing grievous injuries (As in the Blue Beetle New 52 comic, which is what this incarnation of it is using as a base). Combined with Chaos' canon ability to resurrect their dead followers, it isn't to much of a stretch for an unholy blend of science and sorcery to be capable of a similar feat, particularly when powered by the allegiance of all four of the Ruinous Powers and Nurgle in particular.**


	5. Chapter 5 : Aliens And Warriors

**A/N : **

**Reviews :**

**MatchingTies – Billy isn't a leader, he's barely ten years old. Eldrad and Taldeer have no real stake in the future of Earth aside from how it will affect **_**their**_** race- and Eldar aren't long-lived enough to last all the way to first contact with their civilization. They're fairly old for their race anyways, and their lives have only been extended as long as they have because they're psykers. As for your second question…you'll just have to wait and see. I don't want to spoil the story, after all.**

**Sanddrake11- In Eldrad's defense, there was no way he could have predicted that. Deliberate time travel was, for one thing, something that he invented by himself with a highly experimental device. He then used it to propel himself back in time to a place and time where conditions in both the warp and the universe at large were very different than what he had grown used to in his 10,000+ year life. Considering all this, it was a very understandable mistake.**

**Watcher of the Apocalypse – It's made clear in the series that Billy has already been with the Justice League for some time by the time he meets the Team. Since he was transformed into the Champion of Chaos at the same time as he would have been turned into Captain Marvel, it can be inferred that the Team has yet to be formed. At this point, I'm not even sure at what stage of development the Justice League is at yet. Rest assured, though, that they will have their share of encounters with Billy and the Farseers.**

**Jouaint – Thanks.**

**Wargamer08 – Billy isn't just 'young'. He's ten years old. His life as an orphan has made him a lot more street savvy than the average fourth grader, but a lot less book smart. As for his stance on the "Batman Law" pertaining to the pros and cons of lethal and nonlethal vigilante justice, again, he's ten years old. Murdering someone is unthinkable to him, especially for something as impersonal as crime. It'll take something pretty jarring or horrifying for him to reconsider his stance on the subject. Beating up some criminals for a few days, no matter how terrible their crime, isn't exactly a life changing event. He learned an important lesson about being responsible with his great power when he accidentally killed one of La Dama's thugs in Chapter 2, and that will take something major to undo. Nevertheless, Billy will find his resolve tested when it comes to some of the darker elements of the DC Universe (And virtually any element of the Warhammer Universe. Keep in mind that Eldrad and Taldeer are very, VERY progressive when it comes to the "lesser races" compared to other Eldar. Combine that with Billy's rather…distinctive, appearance, and he's bound for some misunderstandings in the future).**

**Potatoe and Chips – Almost certainly the latter. The idea of someone being so suicidally pacifistic and tolerant of threats to their own species that they refuse to even kill any of them is an idea completely alien to every single race in the warhammer universe. At the very least, they'll consider Billy's principles to represent a serious vulnerability to the more manipulative races (Such as either factions of the Eldar or any of the four Chaos factions.)**

**Matthew Blackheart – Thanks.**

**Selias – Billy, like most American children from wealthy, conservative families, had a religious upbringing. Of course, he's nowhere near the level of fanaticism that virtually anyone in the warhammer universe can boast. 'God' Is more of an obscure concept that Billy believes in because he's never had a different opinion. It's what his parents taught him to believe, so of course he listened to them. His religious beliefs may also be tested by the presence of entities such as the Chaos Gods or the Emperor, or perhaps even Gork and Mork. Not to mention all of the deities that seem to populate the DC Verse.**

**Tcuisine – Obviously. He thinks he's a super-hero, so his reaction to the eventual revelation that he is essentially Evil Incarnate is hardly going to be positive. **

**Keeper of all lore – I'm not sure yet. It's down to between "Before the JLA is formed" and "Sometime after the JLA is formed by before they begin recruiting new members." The Team has yet to be formed, and the Titans have just begun their super-careers. This chapter will alter their storyline somewhat. Billy will meet with the DC Heroes when circumstances allow for it to make sense (There aren't any other heroes in Fawcett City, and Billy has yet to become a global threat, so he's pretty much under everyone's radar at this point.)**

**Lord-of-Change – I fully intend for both the JLA and the Team to play major roles in the storyline, as well as The Light to fill an antagonistic role.**

**Ruler of Existence – In this fic, the Chaos Gods are ranked according to their power rather than age. The metaphor as a family of brothers is merely an interpretation of their relationship for mortal understanding, as the true nature of any Chaos God is completely unknowable to mere mortals. Nothings that happens in the Warp should be taken literally, especially not a conversation between all four of the Dark Gods. As for Billy's appearance, It's Just Horus' body with hair (Due to Billy not shaving his head as most Space Marines tend to do) and a typical Chaos Terminator helmet. His Combi-Flamer is the same one the Chaos Lord hero uses as wargear in the Dawn of War II computer game, but using the Blood of Khorne rather than promethium as an accelerant.**

**Guest – This is the next update. Rejoice.**

* * *

As it turned out, several of the women Billy had rescued opted not to go to the police with their story. According to them (with a little help from Scarab to translate), the law would almost certainly do nothing to help them. Since they were technically illegal immigrants, they would probably be deported back to the Old Country where they were taken. The whole thing might even repeat itself…

So, in accordance to their wishes, Billy refrained from having Scarab contact the authorities (Fawcett City Police Department, not the Port Authority. Scarab made sure that the call went through to an officer who was likely to be clean based on various records.) until after they were on their way to a women's shelter Scarab had picked out. He was turning out to be really useful!

The Farseers, as they had called themselves, decided to let Billy handle the situation. Taldeer had been vehemently opposed to the idea, but Eldrad somehow managed to convince her by taking her aside to speak privately.

With the cops on their way and the victims rescued, Billy's job was done in this particular excursion. Eldrad had asked him to lead them to his "Base of Operations". He supposed that meant the warehouse, so that's where he lead them. Now that they were securely within the abandoned structure, Billy sat on the ground and gestured to the room around them.

"Well, here it is." He said. "Home sweet home…" It had been the first semi-permanent lodging he'd had in months, outside of random subway tunnels. This was, quite literally, a step up. The lack of power or air conditioning did little to deter his enthusiasm, although that might have more to do with his enhanced vision and vacuum-sealed armor.

"_This_ is your headquarters?" Taldeer asked incredulously. Each step she took was carefully placed and cautious, as if searching for hidden traps. She still wore her black, high-crowned and pointy helmet with glowing red eyes. Still, he took it as a good sign that her pistol was holstered and her 'Singing Spear' was stuck across her back.

She wiped some dust off of a crate with a slender digit, eyeing the gray mark left on the tip of her glove. "What trickery is this? This hovel has clearly seen no use in months." Her tone became accusatory as her perpetually frowning mask turned to glare in his direction. Seated on the floor as he was, his head was still well above eye level; she still had to look _up_ to glare at him.

He tried to scratch the back of his head nervously, but found his bulky armor getting in the way. "Well…I've only really been here for about three days. I found it the day after I got transformed by the ghost people." He replied honestly.

"About that…" Eldrad began. "Taldeer, I believe that there are some things you should be made aware of." His force staff and force sword were now stuck to Eldrad's back as well, right under the arc-like thing jutting out from his upper back area.

"Such as why you seem to be completely unconcerned with turning your back upon a Lord of Chaos?!" She asked hotly, both hands balling into fists. Indeed, Eldrad had turned to regard Taldeer, who stood a wary distance across from Billy. "He could shoot you in the back with a flick of his wrist, even if he isn't the Lupercal!" How rude. Billy stifled the urge to retort, seeing it as wiser to let Eldrad explain everything. He was a grownup, after all, and they'd only attacked him because of a great big misunderstanding.

"Taldeer, I do not believe that he is a Chaos Lord in the…traditional sense." He held up placating arms, but nevertheless turned around halfway so that the two of them were on either side. He still seemed rather blasé about it, though. He must have had a better grip on Billy's nature than this lady did. "His name is Billy Batson. He is a local…an indigen, here on Ancient Terra. He did not seek out the Ruinous Powers but rather, _they_ came to _him_. He was…transformed, without his consent. His body…this wargear, it was all _forced_ upon him. He never asked for any of it. Isn't that right, Billy?"

Billy tried to nod, but the tusked helm encasing his head stopped him. "Well, yeah. I mean…They said I was _chosen_, not that I had the _option_ to _volunteer_. I was…paralyzed. Scared. They came in all around me, and drew those weird symbols. Next thing I know…I wake up in the same spot and they're gone and I'm like-like _this_!" He gestured emphatically to himself, as if they couldn't see what he was referring to.

"So…" Taldeer brought a delicate hand beneath her chin. "You did not specifically _choose_ to become the Champion of the Dark Gods." She was quiet for a moment, pondering to herself. Those glowing red slits never wandered away from Billy's own visors. "And yet…What does that say about _you? _Obviously they saw something in you that took their interest. In my experience, any traits the Ruinous Powers find desirable are not found in those wanting for malice or blood thirst." Her free hand pointed accusatorily at him. He saw that she was unarmed, for the moment, but it felt like she was pointing a slim knife at one of his hearts.

Intellectually, he knew he had little to fear. He was nearly 6 feet taller than the slight-framed beings before him, and considerably bulkier. Besides, they weren't immediately hostile. But for some reason, he felt on edge. There was just something about these people that made him uncomfortable. He didn't know whether it was the knowledge that they weren't human or whether it was those spooky costumes they wore, but he didn't think he could get to sleep even if he wanted to, now. They made him nervous, in a way he just couldn't put his finger on. It was elusive. Subtle. Somehow, he was beginning to think that it was worse than the naked fear he used to feel around men wielding guns and knives that sometimes mugged people passing through the streets.

Still, he crossed his arms and took a defensive tone. He was _not_ bloodthirsty, and he didn't even know what 'malice' meant! He was supposed to be a superhero, no matter _what_ he looked like. He had even saved both of their lives, and here she was accusing him of being a bad guy. Hadn't her mother ever taught her not to judge a book by it's cover?

"Listen, lady, I saved you _and_ those girls on the docks. I was in the middle of taking down those bad guys right when you showed up and started slashing at me out of nowhere! How am _I_ the bloodthirsty and evil one here?" The point, although delivered with a petulance only a child could possibly muster (further reinforcing Eldrad's growing suspicion that Billy was telling the truth), raised a valid point. It actually caught Taldeer off guard, although outwardly she did nothing to show it. Billy didn't even know how he picked up on it, but for some reason he was sure that the sharp question had hit a nerve.

"I…That is, it was…A moment of weakness. I was…My judgement was clouded. It shall not occur again." She stated, her voice receding into a controlled, stoic pitch. Eldrad decided to interject himself back into the conversation at that moment.

"My point is that we were unaware of your true identity. We believed that you were Horus come again, resurrected by some foul sorcery. We thought that you were a…Well, an evil man, come back through the warp to tamper with the past in the hope of destroying the future. It was our duty, in that case, to do everything in our power to stop you…But I…I underestimated the Great Enemy's cunning." He finished with…trepidation? That was unexpected of the calm and collected man Billy had known for only a scant few hours.

"Of what do you speak?" Taldeer asked, gently. That seemed uncharacteristic of the harsh and suspicious woman Billy had been introduced to thus far. "I…I believe I know what occurred back there, on the water." She continued. "I felt the _presence_, once more…for the first time since…since we left." She trailed off.

"Oh yeah, that. What the heck was that, anyways? One minute you were ready to chop me to bits with that force staff thingy, and then you looked like you were having a seizure or something." Billy recalled the sickening noises and how painful it was just to watch Eldrad struggling on the ground like that was.

"She Who Thirsts." Eldrad supplied grimly.

"Yes…I recognized the pull. The scratching at the base of my skull. The tiny shadows just outside of my sight, disappearing every time I looked. The tinny, high-pitched noise that just seemed to fade into the background. The Great Enemy has awoken, now. Where once the warp was calm…I cannot…I cannot even look in it's direction anymore. But…The Fall." Her voice became a whisper, barely audible. But it was bathed in a faint sense of mania, just at the edges. "The Fall…It was not supposed to happen yet! We should have had years! Years still, with the warp at such calm! I couldn't even power my Spear…It should not have happened yet…" She repeated.

Eldrad's head fell to contemplate the dirty, solid-concrete floor. "It…it was my doing…" He claimed. "I was…angry. I remembered it all so vividly! The Heresy. You…you were not there, Taldeer. You cannot remember it as I did. _Horus_. I remember when he first fell from grace, when he first betrayed his kind to the Great Enemy and slew _his own father_. I remembered everything he did to set the Imperium on it's path, every life that was lost and has been since his death so long ago for his selfish and insane actions." The Farseer's fists clenched as he raised them into the air, his head lifting up now to stare at the air above them. Billy got the impression that he was somewhere else…reliving the past. He might not even see them at that moment. "And so I was…careless. Just as you were, Taldeer…" The gentle admonishment did not go unnoticed, judging by the way Taldeer almost-imperceptibly stiffened at those words. "I lost myself, for a moment. With the warp as calm and silent as it was…It became necessary to release myself, momentarily. With the warp a faint trickle rather than the raging torrent to which we are accustom…It was no longer feasible to maintain such strict control of our minds to power our wargear. But it was a mistake. Our folly. In the heat of battle, of war, I recalled something that…that did not belong in this dimension. With a stray thought, just a single strand of connection between past and present…I recalled something from the future. Something that once thought, could never be un-thought. She Who Thirsts." Eldrad reiterated his cryptic statement from earlier. Billy was beginning to wonder who this 'She Who Thirsts' person was. The way Eldrad was talking about her made Billy think that she might not be that nice of a lady, though. When he said her moniker, his voice became haunted and unnaturally quiet, almost like he was afraid that he'd be overheard.

"…So who is she?" Billy asked lamely. He needed more information.

"I spoke _Her_ true name at the harbor during our confrontation. I was…stricken, just after. When I called Her name she…she manifested, here, in this time. Far earlier than she would have otherwise been born. When I gave Her a name in this world, it…called Her into existence, in a way. Everything she was made of was already here. All the _passion_ and _lust_ and _raw emotion_ of my people was already congealing and festering in the depths of the warp…all it needed was a name to bring it all together." Eldrad explained. He composed himself to do so for Billy's benefit.

"I see…" Taldeer breathed. Her arms, previously coiled beneath her breasts like a pair of cobras ready to pounce at the slightest false move from Billy's direction, now hung slack. Her head bowed down, lost in thought. It was the first time she had let her guard down the entire time Billy had known her. "Then…we…what…_what have we done…?_" Her echoing voice asked.

The apparently senior Farseer shook his masked head. "I cannot know for certain. My Farsight…with the warp as clouded and tempestuous as it is now, I dare not look. But if my darkest suspicions are correct, I fear that the consequences of this folly may reach farther than the two of us…" Eldrad's reply was spoken with an ominous calm that, to Billy, seemed forced. He was desperately clinging to his composure, doing his best to maintain an aura of cool detachment. Billy had no idea when he became so discerning of the subtleties of sub-vocal communication, but it felt like Eldrad was already well past the brink of despair.

Billy didn't really know what to say in this situation. These two people had showed up in his life completely out of the blue – all he really knew about them was that they were apparently people from the future who'd come back in time to stop…something. Billy wasn't at all clear on the details, but he could see that they considered their mission a failure at this point.

Billy had learned a long time ago that sulking so much wasn't good for you, though. When he'd first been cast out into the streets by his nefarious uncle, he had felt like that too. Crying himself to sleep every night, begging for his parents back. He'd been stricken by grief twice over. If he was honest with himself, he knew that there had been times when he felt like ending it all.

But that wouldn't have been good. Eventually, he came to his senses. He started sifting through trash and doing odd jobs here and there. He started to really survive instead of just slowly wasting away out on the streets, wallowing in depression. Obviously the two future warriors here in his warehouse weren't suffering from the same sort of despair that he had been, but it couldn't hurt to offer some words of encouragement.

"Hey, cheer up." He told Eldrad, still lost in thought and staring at the ground. "I'm sure it's not that bad…you can still do something about it…right?" He asked hopefully.

"I…No. You know nothing of what you speak." Eldrad tersely proclaimed. His focus was wishy-washy at best, though…he was nowhere near as intense as he had been on the bridge. He had been like a spear-point, narrow and deadly in function as well as mind. Now though…If Billy had to describe how Eldrad felt, he'd have to say…lost. That was it. Eldrad was at a loss, which seemed out of place on the poised and wise figure he had presented himself as for the brief time in which Billy had known him. "There is…_nothing_…that I can do. Nothing that _anyone_ can do. It would have happened in any case, but…" Eldrad spoke quietly, as if to himself. "I fear that I only accelerated Her birth. Provided the catalyst by which she was spawned. It might not…directly, be my fault, but…I can't shake this…this feeling. It feels like a boulder weighing down on my chest. I can't help but feel responsible for what's happening. Even as we speak." He said dejectedly.

Taldeer, who had been quiet until then, chose to speak. "I can feel it too…" Her hoarse voice asserted, with none of her usual melodious articulation. "It's happening this instant…isn't it. They're dying." She sounded almost disbelieving, but the dread rolled off of her in such waves that Billy probably could have felt it even without this new…empathic…power he seemed to have developed.

"Who's dying?!" Billy cut in, concerned. If someone was about to die, then he needed to know about it, no matter how far away they were. Maybe he could even save them? He was beginning to feel like nothing was impossible with all of these powers at his disposal.

"Our gods." Eldrad said simply. "They are being…devoured…by the monster that I brought in to this world." His own words seemed to add to his distress. "They are being cut to pieces, even as we speak…And there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do to stop Her."

Billy certainly had no idea what to say to that. "…Gods?" He asked skeptically, with an invisibly raised eyebrow.

His tone must have given away his trepidation, because "You Mon'Keigh might believe the heavens are exclusive to your Emperor, but the court of Asuryan predates your Golden Throne by countless millennia. Yes, our gods are real…or at least, they were…" She grew quiet once more.

Since he couldn't think of anything else to say, he asked something he'd been meaning to question her about for quite some time. "…Why do you keep calling me a monkey?"

* * *

The room was quiet an dimly lit. Only the desk lamp illuminating a few small objects lit the room, and they were being carefully examined by two figures in the shadows. One sat at the desk, scrutinizing an oversized bullet casing. Another stood over his shoulder, watching him work. He was a tall, hugely muscled, armored figure. The light reflected off of his mask, revealing a bisecting pattern where one half was copper-colored with an eyehole and three vertical mouth slits, whereas the other side was pitch black without any discernible facial features.

Whoever had made off with the Scarab had obviously done a pretty sloppy job of it, Slade reflected. He examined the spent bullet casing beneath the spotlight on Peabody's desk. "What do you make of this?" He asked his tech-savvy friend. He didn't know the specifics of Peabody's background, but he had always been able to rig up something useful for his missions when he needed specific vehicles or gadgets. This was, of course, a contributing factor in his continued survival (both literally and metaphorically) in Slade's employ.

"Well…I'll give 'em one thing…This guy sure wasn't fucking around. Near as I can tell, these things are .75 caliber. Y'know…the kind of bullets used in anti-aircraft guns." Slade nodded.

"So…what? He had some firepower. No big deal. All I'll have to do is get in close." Slade was very confident in his chances at close range. It was a safe bet that anyone who would lug around a _man-portable AA battery_ with them to shoot up some Romanian human-traffickers probably wasn't relying on their close combat abilities to carry them through. Then again…he'd have to be pretty big to wield a gun like that with any degree of accuracy. "What else you got?" He questioned.

"Here's where it gets fucking weird. Those collapsed shipping crates where an anonymous tip found Bulat's crew? Our informant says they blew up…from the inside. Forensic evidence suggests that this might have something to do with the enormous bullet hole in the side of it, without any exit hole. And those new crates are made out of a tempered solid-iron with aluminum outer-plate, what with all that piracy these days. You following?" Peabody asked rhetorically. Slade's friend and former apprentice could be…abrasive, at times, but he was good at what he did and Slade trusted him. That more than made up for his attitude problems…as long as he didn't push it.

"Hhn. So he's got an AA gun that shoots armor-piercing, exploding bullets." Slade held his chin thoughfully. He supposed that it could be a problem if he got wind of Slade coming after him, and it took out the air approach. He'd only end up getting blown out of the sky that way. "So I guess that rig you hooked up for me to take out the Blackhawks is out of the question…" Slade smiled fondly at the memory. No jet packs this time. Too bad.

"Oh, it isn't an AA gun." Peabody explained absently as he grabbed a vial of black, powdery ash from across the desk.

"Oh? How's that?" Slade asked, genuinely curious. He was fond of weapons, and interesting ones were always worth looking into. Especially if they were carried by his targets. Doing his homework had saved Deathstroke the Terminator from early retirement on more occasions than he could count.

"All those thugs that got pinched? They all reported the same thing to the cops – One huge guy in some creepy-ass armor decorated with spikes and skulls and shit…and he was shooting at them with a _pistol."_

It took Slade a moment to register the implications of that. "…So…someone strong enough to shoot a .75 _pistol_ accurately while wearing presumably metallic full-body armor. And your reports say he was _how_ tall?" He asked.

"Closest estimate? Twelve feet. Yup, I'd say…" Peabody trailed off.

"Definitely a meta." Slade concluded the thought for him. That could be a problem. Going up against a Meta with unknown abilities was a risky gamble at best…Unfortunately, he'd already accepted the payment for the job knowing that he would be up against an quantified target. There was no going back now. "What's this?" He gestured to the vial Peabody had poured a little out of. The ash was pitch black, even against the bright lamp overhead.

"Some of the accelerant residue the forensics boys collected from inside the busted down crates." The gadget guy answered. He was examining it carefully and took a sample out to place in a glass microscope slide.

"What's unusual about it?" Slade asked quizzically. If it had just been normal, Peabody wouldn't waste his time with it.

"It's unidentifiable." Was his short answer. Slade was getting irritated with all of these questions left unanswered.

"Explain." He commanded shortly.

"Most of it doesn't show up on the periodic table of elements." He said simply, seemingly engrossed in examining a piece of the black powder under a microscope. He sent an over-the-shoulder glance at Slade accompanied by a raised eyebrow. "This shit ain't from Earth, boss."

"..." Slade was quiet for a moment. He closed his single intact eye.

"I see…" He finally said. Perhaps this job would be more interesting than he thought…"Maybe I'll get a nice souvenir out of this." And with that pleasant thought, he was off. He discreetly made his way from the safehouse back to the scene of the attack. Hopefully, he'd be able to track down the meta before he got too far.

* * *

"That's…that's kind of racist. Don't you know that you shouldn't judge people for being different than you?" Billy asked incredulously. He had assumed that she had just been pronouncing the word "Monkey" with some kind of odd future-accent. Imagine his surprise to learn that she had, in fact, been referring to him with a derogatory racial slur.

In response, Taldeer crossed her arms and fixed him with a flat stare. He senses …annoyance, rolling off from her in emotional waves. "The hypocrisy of your kind never ceases to astound me." She said it without any kind of inflection in her voice, as if she were stating a tired and ancient fact.

"Now now…" Chided Eldrad gently from across the room. He had folded his legs on the ground, sitting Indian-style with his staff flat across his lap. He was fiddling with the runed wiring and gem-like orbs beneath the triangular tip of the staff, but he seemed inwardly frustrated about something. "There's no reason to get into an argument with our host, Taldeer…You cannot maintain the mindset that we hold in the future and apply it to the present. The tides of time are forever shifting, and we would do well not to hold the actions of Billy's descendant's against him now." Eldrad's wise words seemed to strike a chord within Taldeer, who seemed to deflate in the face of such a logical and sound explanation.

"Now, if you are finished, there are a few matters that I believe we should discuss." He said. His voice was strong and authoritative, and he gave Billy the impression that the conversation _was_ going to go in the direction he wanted it to. He set his force staff aside and steepled his fingers together, with his elbows coming to rest on his lap. He looked almost like a monk, about to enter a meditative trance. "The first order of business is the obvious query ; How did you do it?" He nodded in Billy's direction.

"Do what?" He asked in confusion.

"Save us." Taldeer explained. "We were dying out there. She Who Thirsts had us _in her grip_. No one has ever escaped her…attention, before now. Certainly not so close to the Eye…" She spat out the name as if it was some kind of poison, disdain evident even without feeling the hatred and shame roll off of her in waves. "…So how did you do it?" She asked. Billy could sense genuine curiosity behind the veil of suspicion. He smirked.

"Maybe I have magical powers…" He said evasively. This seemed to annoy the woman from the future greatly.

"Do not trifle with me, Mon'Keigh! We must know how you freed us from Her!" She was irritated, although the last part carried a sense of urgency as well.

"And perhaps just as importantly…why?" Eldrad added his two cents. Billy noticed once again how his glowing green eyes seemed to be frozen in a perpetual glare. "Forgive us for our suspicion, but you must understand…Despite your inculpability in the crimes of the body you now inhabit, the fact remains that you are a human. Even at the height of your civilization's enlightenment and sophistication, your people have never been known for their clemency to attacks upon their own body. We were… erring in our decision to confront you…" He said this is as if he was unaccustomed to admittance of mistakes. It was like he had to use his tongue to drag the words out of his mouth kicking and screaming. Billy began to suspect that these future people were a prideful lot, given Taldeer's comments. "…I admit that." He regained his composure.

"But you chose to save us. _Somehow_, you broke Her grip on us." He drew in a long, deep breathe. It was doubly audible in the silence, and enhanced by whatever strange device was filtering his voice through the helmet. His head fell. "We…are in your debt." He said, and Taldeer remained conspicuously silent. Dread now hung around Eldrad like a stench, and the admission seemed to bother him a lot more than simply taking responsibility for his mistakes. Billy was starting to get that this was serious and that he should stop messing around. The smirk fell from his face, although the two time travelers before him had probably never noticed it in the first place.

"That said," Eldrad continued "I- We-" He glanced in Taldeer's direction, who still remained standing. Her attention was completely focused on Billy's hulking form, though. "_Must_ know how you accomplished it. You do not know what the future holds for our people, but we _do_. It is…a nightmare. A nightmare that awaits millions upon millions of innocent souls." Billy realized now that this was no longer a game, if indeed it ever had been. It was certainly time to stop treating it like one.

"M-millions? But that thing on the docks only effected you guys and-wait. Scarab said you guys weren't human…but you can talk, and you're from the future…does that mean…are you guys…?" And the ball dropped. "You're aliens!" He finally figured it out. It made perfect sense! The weird, curvy and soft-looking technology …the weird clothes…the funny way of talking…these guys were space aliens!

"…Yes. You are correct, Billy." Eldrad replied evenly, though there was an edge to his voice. "I had assumed that you were already aware of that…" He said, a little uneasily. Billy didn't know why that might be. This was awesome!

"That's so cool!" Billy shouted with glee, leaning forward slightly. The motion and sudden thundering baritone made Taldeer flinch to the side, though, and her hand twitched towards her weapons. She stopped herself, but the action did not escape Billy's notice. He pushed the thought aside, though, in favor of expounding on the 'coolness' of the fact that he was talking to real-live aliens!

He began waving his arms and gesturing frantically, with surprising vigor for one so encumbered in such bulky armor. "No wonder you guys have all those awesome space swords and spears and guns and stuff! You must be like-like space samurai or jedi knights or something and-" Billy went on to list several other indecipherable science-fiction cultural references, and the rant must have gone on for quite some time as he only stopped himself when Eldrad held up a hand to forestall him, and verbally commanded him to stop.

"I…do not believe _that_ was what your God-Emperor had in mind when he gave you those enhanced lungs…" He said under his breath, though Billy heard it anyways. Eldrad articulated his next sentence much more distinctively. "You are correct, though. We are not of this…this world, _or_ this time. Though you seem much more enthusiastic to meet us than most humans I have encountered…" Pure, unadulterated confusion was now the main feeling Billy was picking up off his 'mind-radar'.

"As I was saying, though…" Billy realized that Eldrad probably wanted to continue uninterrupted this time, so he just nodded to affirm that the older Farseer had his attention. "The fact that you could free us from She Who Thirsts is significant mainly because Her monstrous tendrils molest us even in the far future, thirty-eight thousand of your years from now…" He explained, to Billy's growing trepidation. What kind of monster could even _live_ that long? And by the sounds of it, this She person was only gonna get stronger. "She lies in wait for us in the afterlife. It is not enough that She _eats our gods_ – " Billy winced at the mention of such a terrible and fantastical assertion "- Our very souls are swallowed whole by Her limitless hunger if we do not entrap them within Soulstones. Even now…as we speak, I can _feel_ Her…but…It is as if she is behind a curtain. Like some cloth has been drawn over by eyes, and I can only see Her between the fibers…But the _future_…the future is different." His voice became grave. "She Who Thirsts has claimed many of the few who survived the initial onslaught – it happened mere hours ago for you, but many millennia of suffering and terror have passed by for my people…Any weapon, any tool, any defense, anything that could offer protection against She Who Thirst must be utilized to the utmost capacity." Eldrad emphasized his point with dramatic gestures, and Billy could tell that this was really important. The eyes of the two aliens were locked on him. He supposed that it couldn't hurt to tell them about Scarab.

"Well…I didn't actually do much of anything. _Scarab_ is the one who saved you guys…" Billy explained sheepishly. He hadn't exactly taken credit for rescuing them personally, so he supposed he was at no fault here, but it still felt wrong to steal Scarab's thunder.

"And where is this…Scarab?" Taldeer half-asked, half-demanded.

"Oh, he's right here." Billy pointed to Scarab, hanging on his neck by his extended mandibles.

Taldeer stiffened. "Are you mocking us again?" She asked sharply. Eldrad remained silent.

"What?! No! S-scarab, go on. Talk to 'em." He told his robot buddy.

**SALUTATIONS.**

Scarab's metallic voice intoned a single word, without inflection. However, Billy's Scarab-amulet was clearly the source.

Eldrad steepled both hands beneath his chin. "Greetings…Scarab. Billy informs us that we have you to thank for saving our lives." Taldeer seemed uncertain, and looked back and forth between Eldrad and Scarab, hanging off of Billy's neck.

**AFFIRMATIVE. DESIGNATION "BLACK SCARAB" WAS COMMANDED BY DESINGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL" AT 04:57 THIS CYCLE TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO AND PROVIDE SHIELDING FROM FURTHER PSYCHIC INFILTRATION TO DESIGNATION "FARSEER ELDRAD" AND DESIGNATION "FARSEER TALDEER". REPAIRS WERE CONDUCTED AND PSYCHIC BLOCKS ESTABLISHED. PSYCHIC SIGNATURE OF UNKNOWN IMMATERIUM-BASED ENTITY "SHE-WHO-THIRSTS" WAS DESIGNATED AND PROGRAMMED INTO THE PSYCHIC BLOCKS.**

Silence reigned over the aliens for a moment, until Eldrad replied. "I see…" He said, although Billy's own mind-radar told him that he was still processing what he had heard. Billy could hardly blame him, though, as most of that had just flown right over _his _head. "You…you are a psyker, then…?" Eldrad fixed Billy's Scarab amulet with a curious stare, which would've seemed weird in any other situation.

**NEGATIVE.**

Scarab provided no other explanation. Billy was going to coax it out of him, But Eldrad beat him to it. "…Clarification?" He asked experimentally.

**DATA RESTRICTED TO HOST-LEVEL USERS.**

Eldrad cocked his head quizzically. He regarded Billy in silence, his question unasked.

"Go on, Scarab, tell 'em. I'd like to know how you did that, too…" Billy said truthfully. He had no idea how Scarab managed half the things he did, but now seemed like as good a time as any to get to the bottom of it.

**ACCESS GRANTED. **

**IN REGARDS/PERTAINING TO [THE EVENT IN QUESTION] : DESIGNATION "BLACK SCARAB" UTILIZED RELEVANT DATA WITHIN HOST TO ASCERTAIN THE PSYCHIC SIGNATURE OF DESIGNATION "FARSEER ELDRAD" AND DESIGNATION "FARSEER TALDEER"'S ASSAILANT. SIGNATURE ALREADY PRESENT IN AMALGAM WARP-IDENTITY OF DESIGNATION "HORUS LUPERCAL". PROCEDURE DETAILS OF REPAIR AND SHIELDING INCLUDE REMOTE UTILIZATION OF HOST "HORUS LUPERCAL"'S PSYCHIC WARP-IDENTITY ENERGIES TO FUEL WARP-BASED PROCEDURE. DIRECT ACCESS TO TARGET'S CRANIUM AND MICROSURGICAL PROCEDURE WITH REACH-PATTERN NANO-TENDRILS. TECHNOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES – "**_**ENTRY CORRUPTED**_**". NO FURTHER DATA AVAILABLE. **

The two Farseer's took a moment to digest this information. "…So…" Eldrad began cautiously, and felt around the hole on his mask's forehead. "You're saying that you surgically altered our brains to repair the damage She Who Thirsts caused, and that you…_remotely accessed Billy's mind_ to shield us from Her. So it's a psychic ability?" He pressed Scarab for details.

**AFFIRMATIVE. **

"Wait a minute, hold the phone!" Billy interjected. "I'm-I'M A _PSYCHIC?!_" He asked in profound excitement. Despite the unpleasantness of the early morning, it was turning out to be quite a day. Meeting aliens from the future, finding out that he's a psychic.

**AFFIRMATIVE.**

_Oh my god!_ He thought. _This explains so much! _All of the feelings he was getting from other people…like he could actually feel their emotions, too…his 'mind-radar'…It was because he was a psychic!

Now, ordinarily, a boy his age would express a lot more suspicion and skepticism at the concept of psychics…but with everything going on recently- from turning into an evil-looking future knight with magical powers to alien bounty-hunters from the future coming to get him in a terrible case of mistaken identity-his suspension of disbelief was in full gear. His natural child-like wonder only exacerbated it.

"B-but how?" He asked. He had never displayed any kind of psychic powers before his transformation, so it must be… "The ghost people!" He realized. "They must've given me psychic powers, too! That's the only explanation."

Eldrad chose then to offer his own opinion on the matter. "I suppose that it is probable that the Ruinous Powers saw fit to bestow every aspect of the Lupercal's power unto you. He was, among other things, a very potent psyker. Now that the warp has been stirred by the birthing of She Who Thirsts, your latent abilities have been awakened…" He brought two fingers up to his temple. "…Yes, I can feel it. You are like a torch, radiating in the darkness that now taints the Empyrean. Nothing to the Astronomicon, but that is to be expected. Horus, for all his might, was never more than pale imitation of his progenitor…" Billy didn't really get most of that, but he surmised that Eldrad could sense him in the…warp, or whatever it was called.

Now that he thought about it, Billy could feel things too. It was like a…sixth sense, almost. What he had previously dubbed to be his 'mind-radar' was undoubtedly something…more. He could feel the emotive states of the two beings in front of him clear as day, shifting in tandem with their ancient and labyrinthine minds. But he also felt others…Shadows, out in the docks, further into the city, even on the outskirts of town…they were like ghosts, just at the edge of his visions. He couldn't really get a reading on them. He didn't know how they were feeling or what they were thinking…But he could sense their presence. And he felt something _else_, too.

At first, he had just ignored it, like a tingle in the back of his head. He could sort of tell it was there, but he thought that maybe he was just itchy or something. But now that he was really paying attention, really looking for it, he could see that it was more than just that. It was like a great, billowing shadow, somewhere far out there. Past the clouds, past the sky…He couldn't even see either of those things, but he knew that _whatever_ it was he was feeling, it felt…Far away. Like he couldn't touch it even if he wanted to. But it also felt intense, and burning. Like if he stared at it for too long, it'd start to hurt. As of now, it just raised the hairs on the back of his neck, like a jolt of static. It made him feel…cold. He didn't want to think about it, or stare too hard with his mind. He wanted to look away.

"Gaah!" He gasped. "What the heck was that?!" He looked around him frantically. He had no idea what had just happened. It had been like he'd had a _vision_ or something, but not with his eyes. It had been like staring at something that didn't have any shape or any color but you still knew what it looked like. It was like a combination of sight and sound that his brain wasn't meant to recognize…and it almost hurt itself trying.

"I believe you just experienced your first glance into the warp, Billy. It wasn't very pleasant, was it?" Eldrad asked rhetorically. The black-robed Farseer was now standing, however. He had his staff at the ready, almost like he had been expecting trouble. He visibly relaxed when he heard Billy's voice, though, and loosened his grip on the force weapon.

"Few of your kind survive such an ordeal, Mon'Keigh. Fewer still retain their sanity. You _must_ be more cautious in the future." Taldeer was not so trusting as the elder Farseer, and Billy noticed that her Singing Spear had also made it's way into her grip.

"Ugh…my head…" Billy felt like he'd just took a bowling ball to the skull…Taldeer was probably right. He certainly didn't want…_whatever_ just happened to happen again. It was weird and unpleasant, and judging by what had happened to Taldeer and Eldrad on the docks earlier, he'd gotten the kiddie version. "Yeah, okay. I'll be careful."

Taldeer leveled her eyes in a cool stare up at him, and recrossed her arms. "It is not enough to merely be 'careful'. You must exercise _absolute discipline_. Just because you are in the body of one of your Primarchs does not prepare you for the dangers that stalk the warp. In many ways, your power serves only to attract them to you like a moth to a flame. _Bait_. Your lack of training and _obvious_ display of carelessness could have gotten you and, more importantly, _us_, killed." Her voice was stern and her tone harsh. She still fingered the grip of her blade contemplatively, as if weighing the benefits and consequences of it's use. Judging by their fight yesterday, Billy really hoped she didn't decide to try her luck against him again…

"Taldeer is correct, Billy. Even for those among your kind that have trained for _decades_ in the use of their powers, looking into the eye of the warp is incredibly dangerous. In fact, I haven't an inkling as to how you survived just now…And with a much less turbulent reaction than we had. No Daemon even came sniffing around you at all, although I suppose that could be attributed to the…_freshness_, of the eye. Regardless, do take greater care with your power in the future. Of the psykers that humanity has ever mustered, only the Emperor himself could boast a stronger grasp of the warp than his Primarchs. You now inhabit the body of one of their number – some say, the most powerful of them all. Such might is _not_ to be trifled with, by either your foes _or_ yourself." The elder Farseer warned him. He had replaced his staff upon his back once more, and now stood to join them. Well, to join Taldeer. Billy remained seated in order to keep them from having to bend their heads too far back to look them in the eye. As a child, Billy had been accustomed to being forced into situations like that when he was addressing adults. He certainly hadn't appreciated it then, and he doubted two older space-warriors would enjoy it any more than he had. He was still tall enough that they had to look up to make eye-or visor-contact, but it was better than it could be.

He took the stern warnings to heart. That event just then- 'looking into the eye of the warp'-or whatever, had been the second time he'd been seriously hurt since he'd been transformed. Only the strike from the Farseer on the wharf had hurt him worse, and even that not by much. He had no wish to repeat either incident, and that warp place just plain gave him the creeps.

"But getting back to the point of this discussion…" Eldrad began. "We have confirmed that your ability to shield us from Her touch is unique to your own powers as a psyker as well as the unique technology provided by your…'Scarab'. What you have to realize, Billy, is that this…this changes _everything_." Eldrad was radiating more emotion than he could remember ever feeling from the Farseer…although really, he'd only known the guy for like four or five hours. But what did Billy's new psychic shield powers have to do with anything? "When we left our time," He gestured to Taldeer, who approached to stand beside him. "Our home was at _war_. A great, terrible, ancient war. I doubt that you have ever known it's like, in this time. It was a war older even than the human race. Our enemies were of every unspeakable variety imaginable, and some beyond even that. I will not burden you with the grotesque details, but suffice to say that we have been fighting a losing battle for countless millennia." Billy was listening with undivided attention. It sounded…bad. Really bad. And the raw emotion of grief and pain that were emanating from the Farseer as he relived such memories sobered Billy to the reality of the events he was describing. Though they boggled the mind, Billy found did his best to wrap his head around it.

"By far our greatest enemy is the one we call She Who Thirsts. Birthed from the decadence and corruption of our ancestors, we live in fear and never-ending conflict. The constant threat to our very souls forces us to lock ourselves away in wraithstone to stay Her hunger. We are assailed from every angle by aliens, daemons…and worse. Our civilization barely clings to life as we are exiled to our Craftworlds for our own protection. We must exercise constant discipline and strictly adhere to predefined paths in life in order to escape the corrupting influence of She Who Thirsts. It is a hard and oftentimes painful existence, with war and death around every corner to carry us ever closer to complete Oblivion at Her hands." Eldrad let out a slow, heavy breath. Taldeer watched her friend in silence, but laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Though it pains me to admit this to one of _any_ race, I fear that I must ask for your _help_, Billy." Eldrad continued after a long pause, and Billy would've scratched his head in confusion were it not for his fully enclosed helmet. He had some idea where he was going with this…but why should it hurt him to ask for help? From what Billy could tell from Eldrad's description of the state his people were in, asking for help sounded like the most logical thing in the world. Anyone would do it in that situation. Eldrad took a moment to gather himself.

"My race is on the _brink_ of destruction at _Her _hands…We have been for quite some time. I need…_We_, need to take every measure we can to put an end to this. This _madness_. And I think that _you_ are the first being in a long time that has ever had even a remote chance of success to put things right. The first member of either race- Eldar or Human- that can make a breakthrough against Chaos. What I am asking you – Billy – is to come back with us. Whatever your…"Scarab" is, it is the only effective synthetic aegis against the corruption that I have encountered in ten thousand years of life. And from what I understand…only you can use it. Please…help us." Eldrad's speech was crisp and cool throughout his entire explanation…except for the last part. His voice seemed to lower in pitch, the edges softening audibly even through the hard filtration of the sound from his helmet.

"Eldrad...I…I understood that there was no way back." Taldeer was apparently as taken aback by the implications of the Farseer's plea as Billy was.

"Yes…perhaps. There is a small glimmer of hope that we might return, in time. It was night impossible before, with the warp as calm as it was. But with the advent of the Great Enemy comes an unexpected boon in that regard." He said guardedly. He sounded and felt fairly certain of it, to both Billy's ears and empathic senses.

"Well, gee…" Billy responded somewhat reluctantly. "I…I don't know." He was telling the truth. He _didn't_ know. Going to the future sounded nice and everything…and there wasn't a lot for him here. Sure, he had some happy memories from when his folks were still around, but they were just that. Memories. He had no tangible bonds to this place

But he was also supposed to be a Hero. He had accomplished more for Fawcett City in these last three days than he ever had as plain old Billy Batson. Now that those space ghosts had given him a new body and a set of armor from forty thousand years in the future, as well as a whole slew of other powers – it almost felt like he would be abandoning it. Fawcett City. His city…

"But what about here?" He tried to reason out loud. "What if something happens here, and I'm not there to stop it…or, or to save anyone?" He kept trying to convince himself that going to the future was a bad idea, even if it sounded amazing and wonderful at first. Traveling to the forty-first millennium to save a dying race of technologically advanced aliens would be the coolest thing that had ever happened to him…But, as he reminded himself, he had responsibilities here as well. No one ever said that the path of the superhero was always a fun or easy one.

Taldeer did not seem particularly pleased with that response, although Eldrad was unperturbed. "Mon'Keigh, your star is on the rise. You need not fear for the well-being of your people for many millennia to come. Now is the time of your heralded 'Golden Age'…before the Dark Age of Technology, predating even your Emperor's rise to power. Your people will not even venture out of this System for centuries to come, by our reckoning. Numerous generations for you. And now… The day the children of Ulthwe begs a Mon'Keigh for their aid... Suffice to say, our need is _dire_." She finished with a glowing red glare, as if chastising Billy for his foolishness. For one absurd moment, Billy was almost reminded of his mother, giving him a stern rebuke in response to the cookie jar found shattered upon the floor. And then he remembered just why that seemed so unfamiliar, now.

Eldrad must have sensed something amiss in his demeanor, even through the obscuring helm on his over his head. "Perhaps that is not the most tactful way to ask for his assistance, Taldeer." He placated, and turned back to Billy. "Let me ask you this ; How long ago, exactly, did you undergo your…transformation?" He asked. Billy resisted the urge to scratch his head in thought.

"Hmm…I guess…About three days ago? Maybe four?" He had honestly lost track of time in the ensuing days since he became this armored, sleepless warrior from the far future. Without sleep or meals to mark milestones of the day, time had become less and less relevant for Billy. With his status as a homeless orphan, it had never been that high on his list of things to keep track of. Day and night had been obvious, of course, so he just went by how many times he'd seen the sun set.

"I see." Eldrad responded. "Then, I would like to make an observation. If you only became powerful enough to protect the populace of your city from whatever threat you're wary of, then it seems to me that they got on well enough without you until now. Meanwhile, mere _survival_ for our people is a daily struggle. We are a dying people as it is, and only _you_ can do anything to change that. Judging by the relative safety and noted lack of anarchy in the streets of this fair city of yours, I believe that it is adequately protected by others already. In this case, would it not be a better use of your abilities to aid the Eldar race, who actually require your assistance?" He asked rhetorically.

Billy felt his resolve weaken. Eldrad presented a powerful argument, and made a lot of good points. Earth, and if they ever really needed them, Fawcett City had the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, and the Flash to protect them from supervillains or natural disasters. But from what Scarab had said earlier and what he could infer from his conversation with the two Farseers, the forty first millennium had very few superheroes. If any.

It sounded like a scary place, and from what Eldrad had said, there were _millions_ of people who were suffering every single day, and there was no one to help them. Except _him_. For once, there were people who _needed_ Billy Batson. They _wanted_ him to come and help them, to be a hero. Wasn't that the entire point of superheroism? To help people? Billy made up his mind.

"Alright Eldrad. I'll go with you back to the future, and I promise I'll do everything I can to help you and your people against this… 'Great Enemy' of yours." Billy said, nodding.

Eldrad was quiet for a moment, and then spoke up. "I…Thank you, Billy. It is not often that our people ask for the charity of others, and even less often do they receive it. It is heartening that I am not alone in my belief that our two races are not destined towards mutual enmity."

"_Charming_. But I think that I might have a problem with this little arrangement of yours." Came a voice from nowhere.

* * *

The room was dimly lit, with only a single naked lightbulb illuminating the dead center of the cubic storage space. Tall stacks of wooden and crates were pressed up against the walls, and the polyvinyl chloride was cracked in places where the gigantic armored figure had stomped through the warehouse.

Deathstroke the Terminator observed the three figures standing in the center of the room, now alert and sweeping the room with those glowing eyes of theirs. Slade didn't doubt that they were all nightvision capable, as he had expected ; Throughout his research with the local scumbags, all reported sightings of the 'Night Giant' had taken place at night. Hence, the name.

Fortunately for him, Peabody proved to be just as reliable as always when he properly applied his ingenuity. With a little black-market stealth tech and some jury rigging, Peabody managed to whip him up a bona fide Stealth Field Generator. It was only this that hid him from the methodically wandering gazes of the three aliens.

At least, it _sounded_ like they were aliens. From the _future_. He'd been around the block too many times to let something as relatively mundane as that throw him off, though. Of course, none of this explained why they wanted some old antique scarab-shaped jewelry. Perhaps it was more than it appeared. He saw it there, hanging from the big one's neck by it's elongated front pincers. He hoped that whatever modifications the giant had made to it would be reversible, or it could affect his payout with La Dama.

Slade had slipped into the room right as they began their little discussion on the giant's (named…'Billy') role in the future of their alien race. Billy the Giant promptly agreed to join them and travel back to the future to save their dying world, or something to that effect. It didn't matter.

What did matter was the implication that the Giant, his quarry, would not be sticking around much longer. Thus, his hand was forced. Slade would've liked a lot more to go on as far as these alien's combat abilities go, but it was now or never. His reputation as a warrior was at stake here, as in every job. Failure was not an option.

The two smaller aliens, though the ease with which they wielded their elongated weapons suggested hidden strength, took on a defensive stance. He didn't recognize either style, which was unavoidable given their alien nature. Fortunately, the weapons they held were familiar enough. A Spear, some kind of high-tech staff, a sword at both hips. He had two swords of his own, and he was confident enough in his own skills that he could take whatever these two had to dish out with those advanced weapons of theirs. Reliance on technology often belied a lack of actual proficieny with the weapon itself, and while he sensed that these two were probably not such, only time would tell it true.

What really concerned him was the main threat…the Giant. Twelve feet tall and two thirds as wide, he cut a stocky and durable appearance to Slade's analytical eye. Obviously it would be very difficult to knock this one down, as his lower legs more closely resembled tree trunks than shin guards. Slade couldn't see his large caliber gun anywhere in the room, so he had that going for him at least. His chances were better if he only had to engage his foes at melee range. Just by their appearance and the research done into the kind of damage the big one was capable of, he could tell that he would need every tactical advantage at his disposal to finish this contract.

"Scarab, can you spot this guy?" The Giant said, seemingly to himself.

_Uh oh._ Thought Slade. _I don't like the implications of that question._

_**SCANNING…**_

Came a tinny voice from the same space as the Giant's…or rather, just below it. A bright green light began to emanate from the six eyes of the Scarab around the Giant's neck. It shot out to form a vertical holographic screen that swept across the room too fast for Slade to move from his position stuck in the upper corner of the room, with a hand and leg on either wall.

_Shit…_ He thought, his single eye widening in alarm as he felt the adrenaline begin to flow and his heartrate increase.

**TARGET AQUIRED. UNNATURAL OXYGEN DISPLACEMENT DETECTED. PAINTING TARGET…**

And with that ominous announcement, Slade felt slightly warm as the green holographic screen swiftly focused on him, seeming to wrap itself over his still form. When he looked down, he saw that he a hologram of green light was being projected across his still-invisible body.

"Neat trick." He said, as nonchalantly as he could manage. Now was not the time to lose his cool. He had to think. Plan. Visualize a strategy that led him down the road to success. Following his knee-jerk reactions had saved his life before…But he counted just as many if not more occasions in which doing so would've gotten him killed.

He jumped down from his perch in the corner onto a box below, and then vaulted down to the floor. He drew both _katana _from his back as he landed, all in one fluid motion. His decades of training served him well…But he had a feeling that they would be tested tonight.

"What is your purpose here, Mon'Keigh?" Asked the female alien in an impatient and imperious tone. She spoke like a woman used to being obeyed. One who issued commands, rather than followed them. He had pegged her as the henchwoman of the male alien, judging by how she stayed respectfully silent as he spoke and negotiated with the Giant. Perhaps there was more to these two than he had been able to ascertain.

"I have no quarrel with the two of you." He doubted that this was relevant, given their bargain with the Giant, but he was bound by his honor as a warrior to inform them anyways. His contract was to kill the giant and reclaim the scarab, nothing more. Of course, their presence might just constitute a demand for a bonus, given that there had been no mention of henchpeople in his arrangement with La Dama. "I'm just here to retrieve the Scarab." He gestured with the point of his katana towards the Giant's neck, at an unfortunately awkward 45 degree angle. "It was stolen from my employer, and she wants it back very badly. I'm only gonna tell you to stay out of this _once." _Intimidation was a perfectly valid strategy to solve any problem, and it was especially useful in his line of work. He didn't really expect it to work, but he felt professionally obligated to at least try.

"…You cannot have it." Replied the male alien flatly. Well. No way to misinterpret that statement.

"Then I suppose I'll have to kill you, too." He stated coldly. Business was business, after all. Two dead aliens were no skin of his bones. Besides, he had been looking forward to the challenge. It wouldn't do to get soft in his old age.

"Who the heck are you supposed to be?" Asked the Giant in a surprisingly calm voice. He sounded _curious_, if anything. Perhaps he felt that Slade was not a threat due to their relative sizes. He would enjoy disillusioning him of _that_ presumption.

"My professional name is Deathstroke the Terminator. I'm a mercenary of sorts. The person you stole that Scarab from has paid me a great deal of money to kill you and return it to her. " And just like that, without warning, Slade leaped into the air. He had only been a few meters from the two aliens, and his intention was to vault over their heads before they could bring their long, cumbersome weapons to bear and then slash them from behind.

No such luck. He found his estimations of their prowess improve immensely as he found himself reflexively parrying what would have _both_ been killing blows in midair. He landed a few feet away from the Giant, who had yet to enter the fray but still loomed over him menacingly. The two alien warriors had spun on their heels to face Slade, not exposing their backs even for a second. This might just be more entertaining that he thought it would be.

"Hnh. Impressive." He commented, as he swept a leg at their footing. They reacted in time, though, and leaped back virtually simultaneously with weapons at the ready. Impressive indeed.

Slade knew that he couldn't fight all three of them at once, so he concluded that it would be best to deal with them piecemeal. He targeted the woman first- not because women were necessarily weaker than men; his early encounters with the League of Shadows had quickly disabused him of that notion. But in this _particular_ case, the woman appeared to be the junior of the two aliens. Her body language and the almost reverent manner with which she regarded the other alien implied that she held him in high regard, at least on a subconscious level. Obviously the Giant was not the weakest of the three, so the process of elimination more than any other factor led to his conclusion that it was the only female of the trio that was the weakest.

Basic strategy therefore dictated that he eliminate her first. If she were the weakest, he would expend less energy taking her out than the other two. It would quickly reduce his opponents' numerical advantage, and avoid a situation in which he was tired out by the first two warriors and was unable to overcome the third. Not only that, but if the male alien had the sort of relationship that Slade suspected was between the two, then killing the woman might drive him into a frenzy. Warriors that relied on skill rather than brute force tended to lose their edge in that situation, which might be the edge that Slade needed right now. He hadn't counted on losing the tactical advantage his stealth field provided so quickly, but that Scarab artifact was even then steadily humming as it kept up the green holographic image over him. Peabody had built in a few electronic countermeasures that rendered it difficult to outright _disable_ the stealth field, but he hadn't counted on a target being painted _over_ it.

But it seemed that the two slender alien's were not content to merely react to his attacks and wait for his next move. The female slashed at him with her spear, swinging it in graceful arcs like a scythe rather than a stabbing weapon. Slade would've taken a moment to admire the subtle beauty of the unfamiliar form had he not been busy dodging back and forth to avoid the strikes. The closest analogue he could think of among earthly martial arts would be the Japanese _naginata_. It was only due to his familiarity with the movements involved in similar weapons as well as his enhanced reflexes that would allow him to do anything but dodge. As she sliced down with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it move, Slade did a reverse roll to put some distance between himself and the woman's spear. Angry red sparks flashed as the weapon vaporized a clean cut through the plastic of the tiling like a knife through hot butter.

He _had_ taken a moment to make several observations about the alien's equipment before he was revealed. For one thing, the edges glowed with an almost imperceptible white-blue tint. It would've been invisible in the daylight. But here, in the darkness, it illuminated the room in an ethereal glow interchanging only with the one light bulb and the alien's glowing visor eyes. In Slade's vast experience, glowing typically indicated extranormal power of some sort. The only reason that he was able to blind-parry their attack that first time was because his _katana_ had connected with the haft of the spears, not the blade.

The male alien was not idle as the woman regained her footing. "I do not know who you are, Human. But even _animals_ know better than to provoke their betters. Recent events have encouraged me to reassess my opinion of your kind, but I suppose it was naïve to think that there were not Mon'Keigh among you even _before_ you reached the stars." He said. As if to emphasize his condescending statement, he dramatically spun around his staff like a windmill. Over his head and around either side, testing the grip in either hand. The room audibly vibrated as he slammed the end down upon the floor and cracked a bit of tile.

Slade rolled his single good eye. If he had a nickel for every time he'd seen some wannabe D-List martial arts thug pull off that trick, he'd never have to take another contract again.

Unfortunately for him, this inward scoff proved just the distraction that the woman maneuvered to his right needed to close the distance between them. It happened so fast that Slade only registered what had just happened as the edge of her blade seared through his titanium shoulder-guard.

Acting on instinct, he seized the shaft of the spear that had melted through half of his shoulder armor and pushed outward. Hours upon hours spent lifting weights in the gym paid off as his slightly superior strength managed to dislodge the weapon. _Slightly._

Slade found himself grimacing with effort beneath his mask as his arm cried out in protest. The woman was _much_ stronger than she appeared, and she had the weapon in a two-hand grip. He had to finish this fast, or she would either break his hold and bisect him diagonally or maneuver him into her allies' killzone. The only reason that the Giant hadn't interfered yet was because they were in such close quarters. Slade had seen it a million times before with super-powered adversaries, particularly vigilantes. The 'bricks' couldn't get a clear shot at him without risking hitting his own allies, which would give Slade a good opportunity to finish them off. The fact that the aliens were all wielding extremely cumbersome, range-focused weapons extrapolated his advantage.

He decided to press his attack by getting in close. He took two quick steps towards the woman but took care to maintain his grip on the spear. He sent a kick at her knee to try and break her leg, but she once again jumped above his aim.

The gambit accomplished it's goal, though. He may not have injured her, but he had never expected such a direct attack to work so well. Instead, he got rid of her footing-and thus, her leverage on the spear- for a second and got her to take to the air. Big mistake.

He had theorized that although she was stronger than she looked, she probably didn't weigh all that much judging by how quickly she darted about and slashed at him with that spear of hers. He was proven correct as he felt the pressure on the spear towards himself ease considerably, and soon it became clear that he had overestimated her weight.

Indeed, he was able to easily suspend her in the air with a single arm now that she couldn't leverage her strength against the ground. It looked like he had finally found a weakness that he could exploit. Now for the _deathstroke._

"End of the line, for you. Don't worry too much though. I'm certain you'll have company to join on your way to meet whoever the hell made you."

She didn't let go of her weapon to escape the vulnerable position as he had expected. Instead, she held on and put two fingers to her temple. He was trying to puzzle out what she was up to when-

"AAAAHHHH!" He screamed. He felt his brains catch on fire, like a sharp knife had just been sheathed in his skull but he never lost consciousness. "AAAHH! GHAAA!" He let out a series of short growls as the katana fell from his hands and his vision got blurry. The woman dropped to the ceiling and he dimly wondered why everyone was standing upside down before he blacked out.

* * *

"Whoah…" Gasped Billy in surprise. The invisible ninja guy just…started _screaming_. Billy…Billy could _feel_ his pain. It wasn't anything like his own pain, but…just knowing that someone could hurt that much made him cringe involuntarily. "W-what'd you _do_ to him?" He asked Eldrad and Taldeer as they replaced their weapons in their sheaths.

"Little enough." Was the Farseer's glib reply. She gave the unconscious mercenary a couple of light kicks to make sure he was really out. It was unnecessary. Billy could feel through his sixth sense that the man's mind was dormant. It was like a shroud had been placed over him, so that only a faded glimmer of his mind's light got through. "He was unexpectedly proficient in melee…" Her voice darkened.

"Indeed. Although, perhaps it would be wise to brush up on your own combat prowess just to be sure. We wouldn't want you going soft during this little adventure..." Eldrad said. Billy didn't need to be a psychic to hear the grin in the other Farseer's voice.

His words chastised her. She looked down in shame, and mumbled under her breath. "A psychic response should not have been necessary against such a lowly foe…"

The mercenary didn't _look_ particularly lowly to Billy- at least not in an objective sense. He would've been very tall if he were standing up. Tall and hugely muscled. His thick leather armor was plated with heavy-looking metallic armor. His mask resembled a half-copper, half-bronze hockey mask with only one eye-hole. Two samurai swords lay where they fell at his sides.

"So…What should we do with him?" Billy asked.

Eldrad leveld a flat stare in his direction, and shrugged. "That's up to you. He is one of your kind, and this is your world. He never truly posed a threat to us, so we will defer to you in regards to his punishment." That was of little help.

"He deserves to die for his foolishness." Taldeer suggested coldly. She literally-and figuratively, Billy suspected- looked down on the mercenary laying on the floor. "Mon'Keigh who do not know their place will never learn. There is nothing to be done for these ones." She flicked her palm towards the unconscious man dismissively. "But Farseer Eldrad speaks the truth. Deal with him as you see fit. I shall sequester myself in one of these rooms for the evening and meditate on today. I have..._much_…to think on." With that, she took her leave of the room. In a few moments, her echoing steps faded in clarity were no longer audible even in his enhanced senses.

"I as well." Eldrad added. "_Your_ body may no longer require rest, but not all of us are so…'blessed'. We shall come and find you on the morrow to continue our discussion. I trust that this…" He gestured towards the unconscious form of the mercenary. "…Will be _dealt with_ by then?"

Probably. "Yes." Was what Billy said.

Eldrad nodded, and then left through the opposite hallway from the one Taldeer had chosen, and Billy was alone. All by himself.

Well, all by himself, Scarab, and a knocked out bad-guy. He thought for a minute and then quickly came up with a plan to deal with the ninja-crook.

"Scarab." He says.

**QUERY?**

"Call up 9-1-1's anonymous tip hotline. Tell 'em I'll be leaving a present wrapped up outside the nearest police station…Oh, and download some directions there, too!" He commanded.

**AFFIRMATIVE. MULTIPLE TASKS QUED. PROCESSING CAPACITY SUFFICIENT FOR SIMULTANEOUS ACTIVITY. CONTACTING AUTHORITIES VIA UNTRACEABLE SIGNAL AND SETTING NAVIGATION WAYPOINT TO NEAREST ARBITE OUTPOST.**

"Thanks buddy!"


End file.
